


a garden of yarrow and foxglove

by oogaboogu



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Bellamy is cursed, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Lexa is a tree, Multi, Murphy gets a cape, clarke is a witch, i think that just about covers it, there are other characters in this too! but if they're not tagged they are not important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23568892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oogaboogu/pseuds/oogaboogu
Summary: There is a beast in the woods, or so the whispers say. A beast with glowing eyes, sharp horns, a thousand teeth. A beast that has been killing children.A young huntsman, Bellamy, has been afflicted with a fatal curse. There is only one way he can save himself: by slaying the beast and saving the children of the village. He doesn't expect to find the beast keeping a young man prisoner in an enchanted castle, a young man who offers Bellamy his help in exchange for freedom.But these woods keep many secrets, and nothing is ever quite as it seems.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake/John Murphy, Clarke Griffin & John Murphy, Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 20
Kudos: 77





	1. the valley of teeth

There was a beast in the Weald.

That was what the whispers said. They passed from village to village, spooking the horses and setting the watchdogs barking at shadows; trembling the fearful hands and hushed voices of travelling woodsmen and merchants; shivering up the spines of wide-eyed children gathered around the fire in the inns. It was said that the beast had the glowing green eyes of the panther, and the curling horns of the ram. It slunk along the forest floor on four clawed feet, but, challenged, it would rise tall as the sycamore, and vicious, the black gulf of its maw dripping with blood and heavy with the stench of rot, the hiss and snarl of it enough to strike a man’s heart and stop it dead. They said that there was a beast stalking the western thicket, and that every day it grew hungrier. They said that it would one day be big enough and hungry enough to sneak into the city and eat the king in his castle. They said that one day it would eat the whole world whole.

To hunt the beast was a fool’s quest; a death sentence. But Bellamy was already dead, or as good as.

He crouched by the stream, and let the trickling water pass between his fingertips, stretched wide and open, and almost entirely invisible to the first joint of each finger. He wondered how long it would take for him to fade up to the knuckle; how long till he had no arms below the elbow, below the shoulder. He wondered how long he had until the curse reached his heart and he faded from the world entirely; no more than a shadow on the grass, the touch of an unseen hand, or the whisper of a voice unheard.

He wasn't going to cry and he wasn't going to rage. He refused. No point.

He rocked back on his heels from the bubbling water, and with a dull, morbid sort of curiosity, unlaced his left boot and pulled off his holey, threadbare old sock. His toes had gone invisible, too. He laughed to himself. At least he wasn't going to end up looking like a disembodied pair of feet—a small mercy, but if Bellamy was going to die, he’d rather not be humiliated in the process.

He scrubbed his fingers through his hair, and put his shoe back on. He had a village to locate. _Upstream_ , the spirit of the Weald had told him. _Near the mountains. At the pass that leads the way into the Valley of Teeth. That's where you’ll find it._

The sun was high in the sky overhead. The silent trees of the Weald gathered thickly all around, darker than any other forest, and quieter. Bellamy knew that nobody was watching. The spirits had since left, his sister and the body of the two-headed deer in tow. It was only a day’s hike to the valley, but he would have to hurry if he was to make it before dark.

And he wanted to make it before dark.

They said a lot of things about the Weald. In the city, they were afraid of it, afraid of the forest they could not tame. In the villages they were less frightened, and more wary; they had lived in the shadow of these woods for generations. They knew its ways. 

The Weald was old, the oldest place left on the earth. The Weald was alive, too. The trees had eyes, and the bushes had ears. The moss remembered. The flowers were poison, the mushrooms caused madness, but the water could heal any ailment. Not Bellamy’s ailment, though. His curse had but one cure, or so the spirit, with her black-eyed stare, had told him:

_Find the beast that has been killing the village children. You’re a huntsman, aren't you, Bellamy Blake? So hunt the beast, find it, and kill it, and bring its heart to me._

He knew about the beast. They all did. No one who lived within a hundred miles of the Weald hadn’t heard the stories. And so Bellamy wanted to reach the village before nightfall, before the woods came back alive and all their shadows grew teeth.

* * *

‘Clarke.’

‘Oh my— M _urphy—_ don't sneak _up_ on me like that!’ Clarke held her paintbrush against her chest, her apron smeared with yellow. Murphy didn't feel an ounce of guilt. He grinned at her, smug as a cat, from where his head appeared from above her wall. She pointed the brush at him, accusatory. ‘What the hell do you want now, Murphy?’

‘To spend time with my friend,’ he said. Without any invitation, he climbed deftly up and over the wall, landing lightly on his feet—right in the middle of her vegetable bed, ignoring her withering look.

‘It’s dusk, you've got a scratch on your cheek, and we're not _friends_ ,’ she told him, but there was no bite in it. ‘Really, what is it? Can't you clean up that little boo-boo yourself?’

He touched his cheekbone gingerly, and his fingers came away red. ‘Oh. Would you look at that—I didn't even know I had a boo-boo. Anyway, I wanted to ask about the killings.’

Clarke put down the paintbrush. It was getting too dark now, anyway, too dark to see. ‘Killings. Lovely. Well, come in.’

Clarke’s cottage was small and cosy and also precisely what one might imagine a witch’s cottage to be, even one as pleasant as Clarke. She dried bunches of herbs upside-down from hooks on her ceiling and always had a cauldron of some questionable liquid or other bubbling away on the fire. Shelves of heavy, dusty tomes and grimoires lined every wall. She beckoned him into the yellow kitchen, where the twilight suffused the room with a greenish tint, and lit a candle with a snap of her fingers. She replaced the bubbling cauldron with a kettle. Murphy tapped his fingers on her embroidered tablecloth. He felt very tired, but maybe it was the cottage, which he knew had for a time been the site of a very potent sleeping-spell. Clarke was, unsurprisingly, unaffected. Out the narrow window, storm clouds were gathering dark as a bruise against the failing light.

Clare busied herself in one of the cupboards while the kettle whistled. ‘Do you want lavender tea or yarrow tea?’

‘Which one did you give me last time?’ Murphy asked her.

She threw him a look over her shoulder. ‘Chamomile.’

‘That one.’

‘Okay. And here.’ She handed him a small napkin, that, though it felt perfectly dry between his fingers, glistened as though it were soaking wet. ‘Press that to the cut.’

‘I thought you said you weren't going to cure my boo-boo,’ said Murphy, but he lifted the enchanted handkerchief to his cheek nonetheless.

‘I’ll never cure another boo-boo again if you don't shut up.’

Clarke’s cottage was perhaps one of Murphy’s favourite places in the world, though he would never tell _her_ that. She had been trapped in this valley for as long as he had; they had hated one another’s guts, once upon a time, but they’d both found that hate grows very old very quickly when you don't grow old at all.

She slapped his mug down in front of him, and sat opposite, her fingers clasped right around her own. ‘So. You wanted to talk about murder.’

‘Villagers are getting uneasy,’ said Murphy. ‘They’ll come knocking here soon. I'm surprised they haven't already.’

‘You’re right. Maybe making them afraid of me was a bad call,’ Clarke said, humming thoughtfully. She sipped her tea slowly. ‘And there have been no unwelcome visitors on your end?’

‘I’m gone during the day. Nobody comes near the Weald at night, much less passes through the valley. If there were, I wouldn't know.’

Thunder rolled overhead. Rain began to spit down. The room grew darker, and cosier, and Murphy wondered if Clarke would let him stay, if he could avoid going back to that empty castle, those echoing stone halls, those silent rooms, the cold bed and the beckoning promise of another bitter morning as soon as his head hit the pillow.

‘Well, they can accuse me of anything they like. They won't catch me,’ Clarke said. ‘I’ve been here longer than their little settlement has. And besides, the killings only started up again recently.’

‘I know,’ said Murphy. ‘You don't… You don't know what’s been doing it?’

‘No. But I’m sure the Weald does.’

‘They say it's the beast.’

Her eyes flicked up to his. ‘The beast has been here for a long time, too. Why would it start killing now? You haven't—’

The rest of the sentence was drowned out by a great shuddering clap of thunder, only a heartbeat after Clarke’s little kitchen was seared white by a flash of lightning. The windowpanes rattled. The storm was directly overhead, angry.

‘I haven't done anything,’ said Murphy, blinking away stars. ‘I don't know what's been killing the children.’

Clarke stood up, and went to the window, peering out into the driving rain. She bit her lip. ‘Lexa’s been quiet, lately.’

‘So she _is_ your girlfriend—’

'Shut up, Murphy,’ she said, mildly. ‘She’s been busy. She said that there’s a poison here. An old poison, resurfaced. The valley is full of it, always has been, except it's spreading. It’s in the soil, and it's in the trees. The spirits don’t know quite what to do.’

‘That’s a first,’ said Murphy, darkly. ‘Lexa agree to set you free yet?’

Clarke shrugged, but her shoulders had gone stiff. ‘Why should she? She's not my girlfriend.’

Murphy kept his mouth shut this time. He joined her at the window, and peered down into the valley. The blinking lights of his lonely castle beckoned, just past the dark shape that was the glen and all its thorns. ‘Does she think this… poison, is what's responsible?’

‘She doesn't know. It could be. The Weald is delicate. All that old magic can be so easily twisted…’

‘Anything can be twisted,’ said Murphy. He nudged her over a little with his hip, and rinsed his mug out in the sink, wanting to linger a little, in the light and the warmth. It was a long walk in the rain down into the valley, and back to his silent, empty home. ‘All it takes is blood. You’re a witch. You should know that.’

‘But the Weald doesn’t kill for no reason,’ said Clarke. ‘Only men do.’

‘And we would know,’ said Murphy. 

They had both been living in that valley for a very long time.

‘No man is capable of something like this. I don't know, Murphy. I don’t know what it is. But I think it’s hungry, whatever it is. And it's only getting started.’

‘Great. Well. I do hope I’ll survive my walk home.’

‘Oh, I wouldn't worry about that.’ Clarke sent a smirk his way. ‘There’s nothing in this world or beyond capable of killing you, Murphy.’

* * *

Bellamy had made good time, but he had reached the very outskirts of the part of the woods he knew. It had been a long uphill trek to the valley, careful as always not to disturb the sleeping Weald.

The village ought to be around here, somewhere. From his vantage point he could just about glimpse the brown track of a road about half a league to the north-east. Smoke rose in the distance, near the mouth of the valley. He decided to cut through the woods, and head for the smoke, rather than following the road. He had made good time, but not good enough; the sun was setting. The sky grew darker with every passing minute. The Weald was beginning to stir, the night-flowers opening, the trees shifting where they stood, a rustling in the leaves and the groans of old wood. Bellamy had heard that the trees in the valley could move; just uproot themselves and settle somewhere new. But while they said a lot of things about the Weald, they said even more about the Valley of Teeth, and he didn't know where the truth ended and the tale began.

He stepped back under the shelter of the trees, back into the awakening Weald.

This part of the forest was old; gnarled tree roots rose lumpy out of the soil to trip him up, and dark green moss chewed on the bark of every tree. The shadows felt deeper, too. Like they were hiding something. Though it was still daylight, it felt hard to tell in here, amongst the hush of old and growing things, the hush of someplace sacred, only the evening birdsong to settle the unease that had begun to grip at Bellamy’s heart. He tried to hurry; it was already too late, already too dark. Already he felt himself disturbing something, like he had thrown a pebble into a still dark pool to see the ripples, startling all the secret slimy things that swam at the bottom.

Then, as he approached a small clearing, he realised all at once that something was wrong.

All the birdsong had ceased, cut out suddenly and completely as if each bird had been struck dead from its perch. The Weald had gone silent. And Bellamy knew at once that he was being watched, by the little raised hairs on his forearms, by the prickling feeling spreading like a spill of needles across his scalp.

There was something moving in the trees. Something large, something slithery. Bellamy held his breath, and raised his bow, but he couldn't pinpoint just where the thing was—he heard movement to his right, then merely a second later, rustling to his left. Whatever it was, it was close, but _where_? The sun had sunk low in the red-streaked sky, but it was still much darker than it should be, here in the woods, here in the clearing. It felt so dark and so cold it may as well be midnight. Bellamy’s heart thundered in his ears.

A low growl to his left. 

He turned, his bow raised, slow and terrified.

A pair of eyes; glowing. Some ghastly _thing_ leered at him from between the trees. Then, it stepped out of the shadows like a nightmare made real, stepping straight out of all of Bellamy’s long-buried fears and secret dreads into the world awake. It had the curling horns of a ram, a head heavy as a bull’s, but with a snarling, snapping mouth full of teeth. Its eyes were luminous in the dim, yet lightless, soulless: there was nothing there but hunger. Its paws were huge, each as big as Bellamy’s head, with claws like knives, and its shaggy haunches bristled with muscle. It was enormous. It was bigger than a horse. It was looking right at him. He could smell its breath. He was going to die.

He took a step back. 

The beast took a step forward. 

He took another step

—then another, and 

—then he turned and 

—he ran as fast as he could

—faster than he ever had before

—his bow forgotten in his hands in haste and terror, leaping over tree roots and under branches, dodging bushes and bushels of berries. 

He couldn't hear it following, but real or imagined he felt the heat of its breath warm the back of his neck. His chest bursting, he kept going, his feet matching the rhythm of his pounding heart. He kept running, certain of nothing except that he was going downhill, steeply at points, but if he slowed, if he stopped, the beast would catch him. The moment he stopped, he was dead. Fear chased him all the way clear of the trees, too fast to stop before he barrelled straight into a field of brambles, brambles as tall as he was, and barbed with thorns, snatching at his clothes and hair and skin. He couldn't help it. He slowed.

No claws came down on his shoulder. No crushing jaws closed around his skull. In fact, he didn't hear anything but the falling rain—for while he had been running, it had started to rain. A little way off, thunder rumbled.

His throat was dry from his rapid-fire breaths, and his heart felt fit to burst; he slowed to a stop, brushed a biting bramble away, and turned to look back at the forest, his forgotten bow raised and ready. Nothing emerged from the darkness beneath the trees. The shadows stayed still. The thunder sounded again, closer, and the rain began to pour, soaking Bellamy’s shoulders and sending rivulets of icy water streaming down the back of his neck and trickling underneath his collar. He was trembling, too, but he didn't think that was from the cold.

He felt a sharp stinging at his cheek, his temple, his forehead, and all along his arms and sides and legs. The thorns had cut through his clothes like butter and sliced into his skin. Without turning his back to the treeline, where he feared a pair of glowing green eyes still lurked, he took stock of where he was.

He had heard of this place. The Glen, they called it; the reason the Valley of Teeth was called the Valley of Teeth. The heart of the valley, all along the river, was covered entirely in a forest of bramble and thorns. It was a blighted place. Any time someone had tried to clear the brambles, they had grown back thicker and stronger the very next day. Bellamy had often wondered what awful thing must have happened here, what horror only the ground remembered, so terrible that now only these vicious thorns could grow. 

He had run all the way down into the valley. He had found its barbed heart.

The last thing he wanted to do was go back into the trees, but he couldn't see the smoke rising from the village any longer. Hugging his arms around his chest, he gingerly picked his way free of the little forest of brambles and teeth, trying desperately not to despair.

A light blinked on in the distance, from over the top of the knots of thorns. He stood on his tiptoes to see, squinting, but the rain was pouring down now, sheets of it in the night. He wasn’t sure if the light was real or imagined in the gloom, but he had few other options. He kept his bow ready in his hands, and began to walk, every nerve singing and alert for the first hint of the beast and its return. Every time he blinked, he saw the glow of its eyes.

The rain had soaked through his clothes entirely by the time he had flanked the bramble patch, and he had trodden in several muddy puddles, splashing his trousers up to the knee. The light blinked through the dark shapes of trees. He could just about see it now: it was a tall, square shape, with the shadowy impression of ramparts, perhaps, and surrounded by a high wall. A castle. A small one, but a castle nonetheless.

He hadn't known there was a castle here. Maybe they would give him shelter. Maybe they wouldn't. He didn't think he had any choice but to find out.

Bellamy’s boots were leaking. Every step squelched with rainwater and mud, and he couldn't feel his feet long past his toes. The field of thorns had torn his skin and he knew he was bleeding, but he was too cold to really feel it. The castle, as he drew closer, looked less and less foreboding, less like a slice of shadow against the darkness of the night. He reached the high wall, and peered through the wrought iron gate at the stone building, tall and imposing in the dark.

Merry yellow candle-flames danced in every vaulted window, and the door—a heavy, dark, oaken thing—hung ajar, spilling a sliver of gold onto the paving stones and climbing up the rosebushes. Thunder groaned overhead, and the rain only seemed to fall heavier, smacking against the top of Bellamy’s hair with a bitter vengeance, as if it were angry with him, as if it knew why he was here and what he had done.

Surely, whoever lived here would take pity on him. Surely, whoever they were, they would give him shelter for the night? He would be happy to sleep anywhere. He would sleep on a straw bed in the dungeons, if it got him out of this cold. Surely they would let him stay.

The castle wall was thickly blanketed with knotted ivy, and completely surrounded the entrance to the gardens, but the rusting gate was unlocked. Bellamy pushed it open with a creak, and faced the stone path to the door. The gardens were bewitching. Carefully pruned blossoms sprouted bright even in the dark from the neatly-laid flowerbeds; red and white roses, pink azaleas, and blue rhododendrons gathering to watch him pass. There was even a little loveseat in the corner by the wall, pale violet wisteria dripping down from above, and delicate fingers of ivy twirling up its iron feet. Around the arch at the corner, Bellamy could just about glimpse an ancient oak tree, branches like waving shadows in the driving dark of the rain. The walled garden was eerily still, only the heads of flowers nodding in the rain. Bellamy felt suddenly as though he were being watched; with a shiver, he looked up, but no peeping eyes peered at him from the windows, and the garden remained silent but for the pitter-patter of the rain.

Bellamy made his way across the cracked paving stones to the open door, and taking a deep breath, stepped inside. ‘Hello?’ he called.

The entrance hall was enormous, the ceiling stretching high above. Everything was bathed in gold light by the clusters of candles and the crackling fire in the hearth. The warmth was immediate; he felt his skin sing with it. A luxurious carpet patterned the floor, and rich tapestries hung from the stone walls. A crystal chandelier glittered overhead, and Bellamy could smell something unidentified but delicious wafting in from another room. He had never seen such luxury, could scarcely even comprehend it—he’d known some people were rich, but now that it was starting him in the face, he was entirely dumbstruck. He wondered, briefly, if he should leave. ‘Hello? Anyone home?’ he called again. There was no answer.

He took off his muddy boots and his dripping coat, and he closed the oaken door behind him. Depositing his wet things to dry by the fire—and lingering a little until what was still left of his hands had turned human-coloured again—he followed the smell of the food through a beautiful stained-glass door and down another lavishly decorated hall into a cavernous dining room.

The mahogany table was set for one, but there was enough food there to feed half a village; roast pork and golden potatoes dripping with butter and crisp vegetables Bellamy didn't even know the names of, and stuffing and ladles of gravy and a variety of fruits and steaming bowls of soup and platters of cheeses and thickly-cut slices of white bread—so much food, and all of it so splendid and rich that Bellamy didn't think it could possibly be real. He’d never seen anything like it before. Even the silver goblet was filled to the brim with wine, and there was a tall jug of water next to it. His throat felt drier than ever, and his stomach didn't so much as growl than contract painfully. He hadn’t exactly been well-fed when he’d set off this morning, and now, after his hike to the valley and sprint through the trees, he felt ravenous.

‘Help yourself,’ said a voice.

Bellamy’s heart nearly gave out for the second time in a day. He spun around to see a young man leaning against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. His dark clothes were soaking wet, from the shoulders of his suit down to the sweep of his midnight-blue cape, as was his dark hair where he had pushed it back from a high forehead; he looked just as bedraggled as Bellamy felt, yet he appeared to be entirely unbothered by it. He raised one eyebrow. ‘Please. There’s always way too much food for one.’

‘I—’ Bellamy started to say, but the man cut him off with a wave of his hand and a half-smile. He plucked a shining red apple from the bowl of fruit that sat in the middle of the table, and gestured at the set place.

‘I mean it,’ he said, taking a seat himself opposite. ‘I suspect you need it more than I do.’

‘Are you a spirit? A devil?’ Bellamy burst out. ‘I won’t eat enchanted food.’

‘That would be wise, but I’m not a spirit or a devil,’ said the man. He pointed to the silverware on the table, and reached over to pick up a long spoon. ‘Real silver. No burns. I can get the iron poker from the fireplace if you want to check that, too.’

Bellamy shook his head, slowly.

‘The food _is_ enchanted,’ said the man, ‘but it’s safe to eat. I promise you won't turn into a pig, or be trapped here forever.’ His eyes crinkled with amusement. ‘I mean, you don’t _have_ to eat it,’ he said, ‘but do you look hungry.’

Bellamy didn't need to be told again. He took a seat, and piled as much food onto the plate that he could reasonably manage to eat, and then a little more. 'Who are you?’ he asked, still wary. ‘What is this place?’

‘Just call me Murphy,’ said the man. While his keen, kohl-lined eyes were fixed on Bellamy, his gaze seemed to be somewhere else entirely. ‘I live here. But shouldn’t I be the one asking you that? Considering you’ve just let yourself into my castle.’ He took a leisurely bite of his red apple, and didn't appear especially bothered by the intrusion.

Bellamy’s mouth was stuffed. He swallowed, loudly, knowing he was being horribly rude—but he had been famished and the food, enchanted or not, was the best he had ever tasted in all his twenty-three years. ‘I’m Bellamy. Bellamy Blake. I am sorry for just walking in—I called, but it didn't seem like there was anybody home.’

‘Oh, it's not exactly like I had other plans for my evening,’ said Murphy with a slow smirk, like he was in on some inside joke. He nodded at Bellamy’s collection of cuts and scrapes. ‘I see you had a run in with the Glen.’

‘Literally,’ Bellamy agreed. He paused in his munching. ‘I saw it,’ he said, slowly. ‘That’s why I was running. It didn't follow me into the thorns—I don't think it followed me out of the trees.’

‘It?’

‘The beast,’ said Bellamy, in a hushed voice, almost afraid that speaking the creature’s name aloud would somehow summon it; that in a moment it would come crashing in through the window in a shower of glass, all of its hundred teeth bared and its claws raised to kill.

‘I see,’ said Murphy.

‘You know it?’ Bellamy asked.

Again, Murphy smiled like Bellamy had said something very funny. ‘I know the beast,’ he agreed.

Bellamy paused. ‘You do? Do you know how to stop it? They say it’s been killing children in the local village.’

Murphy chewed his apple thoughtfully. ‘I heard about that. How many children have gone missing so far? Two? Three?’

‘A single missing child would be one too many.’

‘I don't disagree. But why you, Bellamy? What's brought _you_ here? There’s something…’

Bellamy lifted his hand and took off his glove. His missing fingertips were unmistakable in the light. Murphy fell silent, staring at them. Bellamy couldn't tell if he was horrified or impressed.

‘What did you do, Bellamy Blake?’ he asked, then.

‘What?’ asked Bellamy. ‘You—’

‘I know a curse of the spirits when I see it. What did you do?’

Bellamy stared at his half-eaten plate. ‘I killed a deer. My sister was hungry.’

‘A deer? You mean the sacred deer?’ Murphy said. ‘Two heads, paragon of innocence?’ Bellamy nodded, and Murphy whistled through his teeth. ‘Wow, I’m surprised they didn't just kill you outright for that one.’

Bellamy let out a long breath. He didn't know what made him trust this strange man, but Murphy didn't seem threatening. A little prickly and a little distant, maybe, but he had fed him and watered him and listened to his story. ‘The spirit of the Weald told me that to lift the curse, I have to slay the beast that’s been killing children.’

Murphy put down his apple core. ‘And you saw that same beast today?’

‘In the trees,’ Bellamy said. ‘At nightfall. It…’

‘I know,’ said Murphy, quietly. ‘I know what the beast is like.’

‘Why are you here? I didn’t even know that there was a castle here,’ said Bellamy. ‘Is it yours, this place?’

Murphy smiled thinly. ‘I’ve been here a while,’ he said. ‘But nobody comes into the Valley. Even before the children started to disappear, nobody came here.’

‘Sounds lonely,’ said Bellamy.

Murphy shrugged. ‘Well, there's a witch next door.’

‘Really?’

‘She’s friendly. Mostly. You should go and introduce yourself. If she likes you, she’ll give you tea. If she doesn’t, she'll hex you into next week. And if you're anything like me, she’ll do both.’

Bellamy, aware as he was that his knowledge of this Murphy was limited, nevertheless suspected there was no one quite like him; he lounged in his seat looking entirely at home, even with his dripping hair and smudged eyes. His lovely cape was splattered in mud, but he had such a relaxed demeanour that it seemed like he meant for it to be. 

‘What does she think of the beast?’ Bellamy asked him. ‘Does she know of anything that could help me stop it?’ He speared a carrot with his fork but didn't eat it. He didn't feel all that hungry anymore; even just a taste of the food had satisfied him. Instead, he felt warm and sleepy and—safe. He hadn’t felt safe in what felt like years.

‘The beast has been here in this valley for as long as I have,’ said Murphy. ‘But the killings started up only recently. Neither me nor Clarke can figure out why, or what caused it.’ He seemed to take a moment to think, looking at Bellamy as some strange dark cloud passed over his face—but he chose not to reveal whatever it was that was behind his sudden change in mood.

Instead, he said: ‘I’ll help you, Bellamy Blake. I want the beast gone just as much as you do.’

‘What? That's a generous offer, I mean, but why? What's in it for you?’ Bellamy didn't know what to think, but Murphy looked serious, leaning forward in his seat, arms folded on the table.

‘What do you think is keeping me here, trapped in this castle?’ Murphy asked, and Bellamy looked at him, really looked, and saw the gleam of his eyes. ‘The beast keeps me prisoner here. I have been its prisoner for three hundred years.’

Bellamy sat back. ‘Three _hundred_ years?’

'Give or take a few,’ said Murphy. ‘You’re not the only one with a curse to your name.’ He stood up. ‘Tomorrow I’ll help you track the beast; I know this part of the Weald better than anyone. But I can only help in the hours after the sun has set and before it rises. I won't be here during the day.’

Bellamy shook his head. All he had wanted when he stumbled into the castle had been a bit of shelter, some warmth—and now not only had he been fed, but he had an offer of help in a quest that only this morning had, frankly, seemed merely a rewording of the death sentence that already hung heavy as a cloud over his head, that tightened like a noose around his neck. The Heart of the Weald may as well have asked him to choose how he would rather die: by being torn to pieces by a monstrous beast, or by simply fading out of life altogether. ‘Thank you, Murphy,’ he said. 'I mean it.’

Murphy just shrugged. ‘Finish your food. You’re welcome to stay if you like. Can’t imagine you want to go back out into the rain, and the Weald isn’t safe at night. The bedroom is upstairs. Feel free to take the bed.’

‘No—where will you sleep?’ Bellamy asked, aghast. ‘I can't put you out of your own bed. I’ll sleep anywhere. I’ll share. Please Murphy—you’ve been too kind already.’

Murphy scoffed. ‘Kind? By giving you food I wouldn’t have eaten anyway?’

‘It doesn't matter. You still gave it, when you didn't have to. Please, Murphy, I really can't take your bed.’

Murphy grimaced. ‘It’s a big bed. But… I might snore.’

‘Well, I definitely snore,’ said Bellamy.

‘Fine,’ Murphy said, unhooking his cape and tossing it over his seat. ‘Leave the plates. They’ll be taken care of.’

‘By who? Do you have servants?’ Bellamy asked.

Murphy just shook his head. ‘You’ll see. Come on, then. Take your things.’

Bellamy followed Murphy back into the hall. Out of the dining room, the castle seemed a little darker, a little gloomier; he heard for the first time the storm that raged just outside, the wind's unhappy howls and the—distant, now—crackle of thunder and lightning. A draught rattled the beautifully embroidered tapestries, depicting the thick woods and delicate wildflowers of the Weald. One bore an image the two-headed stag in its centre. Bellamy felt a twinge of guilt as he passed it. Murphy led him up a gleaming staircase, and to a gallery filled with empty frames; the paintings they had once held were gone. Bellamy didn't ask.

‘Washroom,’ Murphy grunted, nodding to a room on one end of the gallery, and then beckoned Bellamy to the door on the other.

Murphy’s bedroom was bigger than Bellamy’s entire cottage. At one end stood an enormous four-poster bed, lumpy with more feather-pillows than Bellamy could count, made up with satin bedsheets and a marvellous, embroidered coverlet that he suspected would fetch enough at market to have fed him and Octavia both for an entire winter. The bed was so big it took up most of that side of the room. The other end was what appeared to be a library; shelves and shelves of books covered each wall, and a comfortable little armchair was nestled into one corner; a small tower of books wobbling next to it. One lay open on the low table, a ribbon for a bookmark tucked into the corner. The bay window, open just a crack, looked out on the little garden that Bellamy had entered by. A breeze shifted the gauzy curtains, sending a chill through the room. The candle flames flickered. 

Bellamy thought it looked like the bedroom of a prince. Suddenly he felt very dirty and strangely small. ‘This place is…’ he trailed off, unsure if he had the words to describe it.

‘Make yourself at home,’ said Murphy, dully. He leaned against the bed, and began to unlace his boots. Bellamy busied himself by glancing over the spines of the books while Murphy changed out of his wet clothes, tossing them carelessly in a corner, and left, presumably for the washroom. Some of the books were in French, and still more in Greek.

He didn't know why he suddenly felt frightfully awkward. He’d served his year in the Castle Guard, crammed into too-small barracks. He could sleep anywhere. And yet, he felt strange sharing a bed with Murphy—even if Murphy had offered, even if he seemed completely unbothered by the whole thing, even if the bed was big enough to fit three men spread-eagled without one touching the other. He shook it off. 'Grow up,’ he muttered to himself, and began to unbutton his shirt.

He climbed into the bed, wearing only his least muddy undergarments, and leaving the rest of his things folded neatly at the foot of the bed. Murphy wasn’t long returning; Bellamy heard the creak of the floorboards before all of the candles were blown out. Murphy's shadow closed the window. Bellamy closed his eyes.

'Thank you, Murphy,’ he said.

‘Don’t mention it,’ came the low reply. The other end of the bed sank as Murphy got into it. The bed was so roomy that they might as well have not been sharing it at all, but real or imagined, Bellamy felt a warm glow all along his back from the other side of it all the same. Then, all of a sudden, his long, hard, terrifying day caught up with him and he instantly fell fast asleep.

* * *

Sunlight and birdsong.

Bellamy woke up with a start. Light streamed down from above, straight into his eyes, half-blinding him; for a moment he forgot where he was. There was a blanket, heavy and woollen and warm, tucked tightly around his shoulders, and it fell aside as he sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He had fallen asleep in a bed next to Murphy, in that beautiful bedroom in that beautiful castle—but that wasn’t where he had woken up.

He was in the centre of a grassy meadow, the morning sun rising high above. A scattering of wildflowers attracted little white butterflies, and the air smelled like spring. His clothes from yesterday—inexplicably clean and laundered—were folded next to his boots on the dew-soaked grass next to him. As his blanket pooled in his lap, Bellamy spotted a glimpse of white tucked amongst the folds—a note, written in a clear hand.

_Morning. Village is due east. Clarke lives to the west, in a hidden hollow in the side of the valley. If you still want my help, meet me at Clarke’s cottage at dusk._

_—Murphy_

_P.S. Sorry I didn’t warn you about the castle._

Bellamy looked up from the note, and for the first time noticed the crumbling stone; pieces of walls standing lonely and sagging with age surrounded him, roughly in the shape of a square, falling apart, bitten by white spots of lichen. He was sitting in the centre of an old ruin—the ruin of the castle that, last night, had been wholly resplendent, that had had rooms filled with food and furniture, that had had a roaring fire in the grate. Now, the place looked like it had been left to crumble alone for a hundred years, or more.

Bellamy got to his feet, holding the blanket in shaking hands. The breeze passed through the desolate ruins, whistling through cracks in the stone, and even under the yellow light of day, Bellamy felt himself shiver.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and they were roommates..?
> 
> anywho! I do not have an update schedule as I am allergic to consistency, but I promise Chapter 2 is a-comin. Might take a while, but she's a-comin
> 
> I think this might get darker as it goes on so I will update the tags accordingly, as always thank you so much for reading and hope wherever you are you can stay safe!


	2. east of the sun

Murphy always woke before the sun did, and he never stayed to watch the castle turn. He hated that hour, with all its gentle washes of light, its birdsong. The fabric of the world grew thin, and he often saw the ghosts; an entire army of them marching out of the trees, some looking like mere boys playing dress-up, plates of armour slipping from narrow shoulders, and others already wounded, already dead, carrying their severed heads in their hands or cradling their broken arms to their chests. It was like they weren't sure what stage of life they wanted to re-enact, like all their collected years had gotten muddled up in their phantom bones. Their blood poisoned the ground. The dried-up river ran again, and ran red and curdling. Murphy heard the echoes of steel on steel, and of war-cries.

Sometimes, his mother was there, instead. She had nothing to say to him, nor had he anything to say to her. And sometimes, when the Weald was up to its full trickery, he saw himself; a dark-haired child flitting through the trees. The little boy always skipped ahead, ignoring any calls that beckoned him back, slipping between the trunks and laughing up at the glimmering canopy of the forest, like he belonged there. He would often slow, then, head cocked, as if he were listening for something, though Murphy never heard what. Then he would begin to turn around — but always, always, he would disappear the moment that he did, and Murphy would never get to see his own face. For that alone, he was grateful.

So he didn't look back at the blinking lights of his castle before it sunk to ruin with the rise of the sun. The huntsman that still slept within it was doomed, cursed, his life trickling away with every breath he took. And in Murphy’s three hundred years, he had learned one thing above all else: there was no point getting attached to the damned.

* * *

The Weald and all its dread retreated during the day, and the entire valley felt bracing and fresh and new after the storm, the grass somehow greener and the sky somehow bluer. Bellamy wandered around the ruins of the castle for a while, relishing the quiet peace of it, sitting amongst the blossoms in the overgrown garden, running his fading hands over the swatches of high grass. Ivy had overtaken what was left of the garden walls, piecemeal and crumbling, but the little loveseat he had spotted the night before remained; the iron rusted, but still intact. He was struck mostly by the lonely beauty of the place. There was something strange and lovely about these ruins, something almost holy, in comparison to the bitter brambles of the valley, and the hush of the forest. Time slowed here. He imagined as a child he and Octavia would have played amongst these ruins, hiding behind the old stones or picnicking in the little meadow, and neither man nor ghost would have disturbed them.

He wondered, and not for the first time, where Murphy was now. He had said he would be gone during the day, but hadn't revealed where. Bellamy had had the sense that even if he had asked, his host would never tell; Murphy seemed a man fond of his secrets.

But Murphy _knew_ the beast. He was its prisoner. Bellamy wondered if that was where he had gone, if the beast took him away during the day. He wondered if Murphy was afraid. Bellamy couldn't imagine it—three hundred years with that _thing_ , shrinking back from its teeth, from the smell of death on its breath. Three hundred years in the creeping Weald, three hundred years alone in the flickering rooms of that castle.

For once, Bellamy was happy his curse was killing him quickly.

This morning, he had awoken to find he had disappeared up the second joint of each finger—his thumbs were almost entirely gone—and the fact remained that Murphy, enigma or not, was the best hope he had. A strange numbness had settled in the tips of his fingers and the ends of his toes; when he touched his cheek with his invisible fingertips, his skin felt rubbery and unreal, like he’d had pins-and-needles for too long, like his hands didn’t belong to him at all, like his skin was a glove and the real him was retreating back from the surface. He estimated that if his fading kept going at this rate, he wouldn't see the summer. He probably wouldn't even see the new moon.

He reminded himself of his promise the day before: he wasn't going to cry. He wasn't going to rage. A ladybug landed on a nearby blade of grass, and Bellamy stared at it until his eyes stopped pricking with tears, until he could breathe again without the threat of a sob tearing free from his chest.

‘Nothing else for it,’ he murmured, and stood. The day was yellow and bright and utterly reassuring; no creeping things remained amongst these old stones. Anxious to do something that wasn't ruminating on the details of his own doom, Bellamy decided that he would take his chances with the witch—a decision influenced in no small part by his realisation that there was very little she could do to him now. The reality of his impending death was terrible, of course, but as Bellamy set off to search for the cottage, he realised it was strangely freeing, too: there was nothing that could hurt him now more than he had already been hurt. He was already dead, and no witch, no matter how talented, could kill him twice.

The cottage was, surprisingly, not that hard to find. A thicket of oak and beech hid it from prying eyes on the western slope, but a clearly marked dirt path wound in between the trees and led the way. It was a low-slung cottage, built from stone, the walls extending out the back to guard a small vegetable and herb garden. A delicate spiral of smoke rose from the high chimney to join cottony wisps of clouds above. Bellamy didn't pause before knocking on the stout wooden door. 

No witch could kill him twice.

He heard a muffled shriek, and then a crash, and then a yell. Frowning, he ducked his head closer to the door, listening—only to jump back as it suddenly swung open, revealing a wild-eyed young woman holding a cast iron frying pan in both hands.

‘Hello?’ he said.

‘What do you want?’ she snapped. She held the frying pan like she meant business.

‘Why do you have a frying pan? Aren't you a witch?’ Bellamy asked her.

‘I _am_ a witch,’ said the woman—Clarke, if Bellamy was remembering correctly. ‘I am a witch with a frying pan she isn't afraid to use. What the hell do you want?’

'Who is it?’ Bellamy heard another voice call, and Clarke, still looking harried, turned to yell back over her shoulder: ‘It’s a human man!’

‘Kill him!’

‘No!’ Clarke huffed. ‘And if I come back into that kitchen to see another hole in my ceiling, I swear you’re going to be plagued by woodpeckers until next spring!’

There was a scuffle, and a smiling woman appeared at the end of Clarke’s darkened hall. And though she wore no ashes around her eyes, and though her face was clean and smooth and free of war-paint, Bellamy knew this woman. He’d recognise her anywhere.

‘ _You_ ,’ he said.

The woman’s smile faded. She looked him up and down. ‘Oh. Well, no need to kill this one, Clarke,’ she said, coolly. ‘He’ll be dead in a week anyway.’

Bellamy shook his head. 'Murphy sent me,’ he said, weakly. ‘We’re going to kill the beast. Like _you_ told me to.’

'Murphy sent you?’ Clarke said. She looked between Bellamy and the spirit in her hallway, her grip on the frying-pan faltering. ‘Well. I guess you’d better come in, then.’

* * *

Clarke didn’t know just what to make of Murphy’s new friend, but she did know that he and Lexa were staring daggers at each other from across her kitchen table. Bellamy was rubbing his gloved hands together, a bow and a quiver of arrows slung around his back and within easy reach, while Lexa looked simply murderous, forest-green eyes flashing. Clarke decided to start there.

‘So,’ she said. ‘How do you two know each other?’

‘—He killed the sacred deer.’

‘—She _cursed_ me!’

Okay. Clarke decided _not_ to start there. ‘Bellamy. How do you know Murphy?’

‘I broke into his castle last night. Well— it was open. He fed me and let me stay.’ Bellamy looked up at her. ‘He told me that the beast has kept him prisoner here for three hundred years.’

Lexa let out a derisive laugh. Clarke shot her a warning look that she chose to ignore, instead folding her arms over her chest, and continuing to glower at Bellamy.

‘And Lexa here,’ said Bellamy, ‘is the one who ordered me to slay whatever it is that's been killing children, or— or I’ll fade from the world forever.’ His hands kept fiddling atop Clarke’s table; she couldn't tell if he was restless, or if there was something wrong with them. He looked tired, and he was scratched, from his cheeks down to the sliver of bare wrist between sleeve and glove, with little tears decorating his clothes, like he’d angered a very vicious cat—or, more likely, tumbled head-first into a forest of briars and thorns. The Glen had never taken kindly to anyone, never mind big lumbering huntsmen like Bellamy.

Lexa cocked her head to one side. ‘The Weald will have its dues, Bellamy Blake. You killed an innocent thing and so you must kill an evil thing to negate the crime.’

‘And Murphy told you to come here?’ Clarke interjected. Of course Murphy would try and foist his problems on her during the day, she thought, but with such little resentment that it surprised her. She had grown to like her closest neighbour, after all, and if he had decided to trust this huntsman, then for his sake she’d give Bellamy the benefit of the doubt.

‘I woke up, and he was gone, but he left me this,’ said Bellamy. He fished in his pocket, and pulled out a crumpled note. ‘The castle was gone, too, turned to ruins. Is that part of his curse as well?’

‘Murphy’s is an old curse,’ said Clarke. ‘As old as mine. The castle wasn’t always a ruin, but it is now.’

‘What’s your curse, then?’

‘I can't leave,’ Clarke said, simply. ‘This little valley is my home now, and will be until the end of my days.’

‘A gilded cage,’ said Bellamy. ‘Like Murphy.’

‘Yet, not like Murphy at all,’ said Lexa. She leaned back in her chair. ‘Murphy got everything he could have ever wanted—clothes, food, that castle, his books, even the gardens that flower all year round. Everything Clarke has, she built herself, from the ground up. She made a home here. They might both be cursed, but they aren't the same.’

‘Yeah, and are you behind both of _their_ punishments, too?’ said Bellamy.

Lexa didn't smile. ‘I may speak for the Weald, but I don't tell it what to say. I was not the one who cursed you, Bellamy Blake. You did that to yourself.’

Bellamy didn't say anything to that. He moved his hands from Clarke’s tabletop, clasping them instead around his knees, under the table. ‘Well, I’m here now,’ he said. ‘And I _will_ stop the beast. I promise you that.’

Before anything else could be said, there was another knock on the door. 

Clarke spun around to Lexa, who, thankfully, was less startled by this knock than she had been by the previous. She had a pair of green leaves curling out from behind each of her ears, and her fingers were looking suspiciously knobbly where she had them clasped together in her lap, but she stayed seated, one leg crossed over the other. ‘Sounds like you have another visitor, Clarke,’ she said, sweetly.

Bellamy’s sudden knock earlier had Lexa scratching the beams, but mercifully, not breaking through. Clarke had thus far repaired, at her count, six holes in her ceiling thanks to Lexa’s spontaneous transformations, and Lexa herself had broken more than a few branches. Neither was keen for a repeat performance. 

‘Two in one day—I don't know what I did to deserve this,’ Clarke said with a groan. She picked up her heavy frying pan from where she had placed it on the table. ‘Does nobody respect the rights of hermits anymore?’

Bellamy rose, too. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘Just in case your _frying pan_ needs back-up.’

She glanced out the front window before she opened the door. She didn't recognise the man who stood there, but she recognised the colours of his uniform. She wasn’t _that_ much of a hermit. She scowled at him, and held up her frying pan in warning. ‘What is it?’

He looked her up and down, a cruel curl to his lip. ‘Ma’am,’ he began to say, but she waved her pan and cut him off.

‘No spiels. Why are you here, _Guard_?’ she demanded.

There hadn't been soldiers in the valley for three hundred years. Clarke did her best to conceal how uneasy this man made her, with his flat, calculating gaze, with the gun—not a sword, a _gun_ —in a holster at his belt. She stood up straight, and looked him in the eye.

‘You know why I’m here, witch,’ said the man. He stepped closer to the doorway, crowding her back a little, but she stood her ground, chin tilted up defiantly.

Then, behind her, Clarke heard Bellamy gasp. ‘Captain Pike? Is that you?’

The man’s harsh face split into a disbelieving grin. ‘...Blake?’

Clarke stepped back to let Bellamy past. She watched as the two men gave each other a very manly embrace, full of guffaws and back-slapping to counter any danger of displaying sincere feeling, keeping her wits about her and her frying pan close to her side.

‘Looks like everybody knows everybody today,’ she commented coldly, as Bellamy stepped back. ‘Care to explain?’

‘I served my year of conscription in the Castle Guard,’ said Bellamy. ‘Under Captain Pike here.’

‘You were one of my best, Blake,’ said Pike, warmly. ‘Could have gone the whole way, had you stayed. Could even have outranked me in a couple years, I'm sure.’

Bellamy rubbed the back of his neck, a little awkwardly. ‘Oh, I don't know about that, Captain. And besides, I had my sister to look after. When our mom died, well…’

‘I understand,’ Pike said with a nod.

‘Did the King send you?’ Bellamy asked him. ‘About the killings?’

Clarke heard the floorboards creak in the next room, but Lexa didn't appear in the hall this time, choosing instead to stay hidden behind the door, listening.

‘The first two children went missing about six weeks ago,’ said Pike. ‘Since then, the monster has taken two more, and another one only this morning. When it became clear that there was a pattern forming, the King decided that somebody needed to step in.’

‘There haven't been soldiers in this valley for a long time,’ Clarke interjected, a warning in her tone. ‘And the Weald will not take kindly to being disturbed, Mr Pike.’

‘And am I to understand you know nothing of the murders yourself, witch?’ said Pike, all the warmth gone from his voice. ‘There are some who would say that when children have gone missing, the witch's cottage is the first place to look.’

‘I have nothing to hide,’ Clarke said, coldly. ‘I don't know anything about the killings.’

Pike held her gaze for a long moment, but Clarke didn’t falter or shrink back. She knew Pike’s type, and she knew the King’s type. They wanted the Weald cleared and all of its magic extinguished. Unruly magic woods were never much good for business, even before they housed murderous beasts.

‘What brings you here, then, Bellamy?’ Pike asked, breaking his stand-off with Clarke.

‘Same thing as you,’ said Bellamy. ‘I’m looking into the killings. Seeing if I can help.’ He didn't mention anything about his curse, Clarke noticed, and he had started wringing his gloved hands together again. ‘I mean, if there's anything I can do—’

‘You should come to the village,’ Pike interrupted. 'Meet the mayor, and some of the other parents. I’ve got all my best men guarding the village walls at night; I’m sure they’d be grateful for an extra pair of eyes and set of hands. I mean it, Blake. You really were one of my best.’

Bellamy nodded. Clarke thought that there was something a little starstruck about it, like Pike was a witch himself, and had caught Bellamy in his spell. She tried to separate her inherent distrust of soldiers with her appraisal of Pike, and failed; she imagined, all those years ago, that he too would have led a thousand men to a battle they could not win, would have shed blood in the name of some made-up goal, shroud pointless sacrifice in empty words and hollow claims to nobility. No. There was simply something _off_ about Pike, and it was all Clarke could do to keep in mind that Bellamy was three hundred years her junior. If he couldn't see it himself, then nothing she could say would ever convince him.

‘Maybe,’ Bellamy said. ‘I’ll drop by tomorrow, anyway. See what I can do.’

‘Good man, Blake,’ said Pike. He glanced back at Clarke, full of distrust. ‘Do be careful, won’t you? Nobody knows quite what this beast is, or what it’s capable of.’

‘I will, sir,’ said Bellamy. With one final stare at Clarke, Pike turned and left, keeping his hand ready at his holster as if he expected her to hex him the moment his back was turned.

Lexa appeared in the hallway. ‘I don’t like that man,’ she said, darkly.

‘Surprise, surprise,’ Bellamy murmured, under his breath, but Lexa ignored him.

‘Clarke,’ she said, seriously. ‘Soldiers and men from the city poking around in the Weald will only make things worse.’

‘I know,’ said Clarke, studying Pike’s retreating back. ‘We’ll just have to figure out how to stop it before he does something stupid.’

‘Pike’s a good man,’ Bellamy objected.

‘He would burn these woods to the ground and not think twice about it,’ Lexa said shortly. Bellamy, wisely, chose not to reply.

‘Murphy told me he would meet me here at dusk,’ he said. ‘Do you know where he goes, during the day?’

Clarke and Lexa shared a glance.

‘He’s with the beast,’ said Clarke. ‘That’s the deal. He can do whatever he likes at night, but during the day…’

‘I figured,’ said Bellamy. ‘He didn’t... seem to want to talk about it.’

‘Do yourself a favour, Bellamy, and don’t go nosing around,’ Clarke told him. ‘If Murphy’s agreed to help you, then he’s agreed to help you. If he wants to tell you more, then he will. Just leave it at that.’

‘What do you mean?’ Bellamy asked, brow furrowed.

Clarke smiled thinly. ‘We all have our _sacred deer_ , Bellamy Blake. Myself and Murphy included.’

‘I should be going,’ Lexa said, then. She plucked a leaf from behind her ear, and paused, looking up at Bellamy thoughtfully. ‘You made it this far,’ she said, ‘but do you have any game plan for how you’re actually going to slay the monster once you find it?’

Bellamy looked a little abashed. ‘Uh,’ he began to say, but Lexa cut him off.

‘There’s a tree,’ she said, catching Bellamy in her gaze; Clarke knew intimately how it felt to be trapped there, in the inescapable hold of her green eyes, and she was not surprised when Bellamy stilled, as though the grip of Lexa’s attention were a physical thing holding him fast, a fly caught in a spill of honey. ‘The oldest tree in the forest,’ she continued, head cocked to one side as she regarded him. ‘It’s not far from here. No ordinary arrow will kill the thing that you’re looking for, so I would think very carefully about what might work instead. And that oak is ancient; if there is any spirit in the Weald that might know something that could help you, Bellamy Blake, it’ll be her.’

‘But, why-?’ Bellamy asked her. The _—are you helping me?_ at the end went unsaid.

‘There’s an infection in the Weald.’ Lexa looked away, not meeting his eye and instead gazing out over the woods, and down at the valley. ‘A sickness, growing in my home. And sicknesses like this get only worse before they get better.’

And on that cheery note, she turned on her heel, pressed a quick peck to Clarke’s lips, and disappeared amongst the trees, slipping out of sight in a dapple of sunlight as if she had stepped behind a curtain. The birds continued singing.

‘She always that cryptic? And abrupt?’ Bellamy asked, his expression a mixture of bemused and, reluctantly, impressed.

Clarke sniffled a laugh. ‘We’re all cryptic here, Bellamy.’

‘I’m beginning to see that, yeah.’

Clarke turned to look at him, one hand on her hip. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Murphy won’t be back for a few hours yet. How would you feel about repainting my ceiling, since you were the one who scratched it?’

‘I didn’t scratch your ceiling,’ Bellamy protested.

‘Your needlessly loud knock startled Lexa into turning into a tree in my kitchen this morning, and her branches then scratched my ceiling. I’m holding you personally responsible,’ Clarke said, very seriously, fighting off a grin. ‘By the laws of this land, you are morally obligated to paint over the damage.’

Bellamy let out a sigh of immense suffering, and pushed past her back into the house, grumbling. ‘Where do you keep your paint, then, witch?’

* * *

Bellamy had not expected he would enjoy Clarke’s company as much as he did. He didn’t know many witches, granted, but she was like nobody he had ever met. She had an equal balance of kindness with wryness with cleverness with something else entirely, and it filled up her little cottage and warmed it from within. 

Once he had painted her ceiling (while she had leaned against the counter, cup of tea in hand, with no shortage of smug instructions), she had offered to heal any lingering cuts and scratches he had from his run-in with the Glen the night before. They spent the afternoon effortlessly debating the merits of various traps and snares, or which vegetable to plant when. Clarke had a hard-won earthiness about her that Bellamy liked; she knew the land, and she respected it. He’d had to scramble together a living from the ground from the day he’d learned he couldn't rely on his mother to do the same, and so he found himself falling easily into place with Clarke and her ways. He _liked_ her.

Murphy arrived back at dusk, trudging out of the trees. They saw him coming from the kitchen window, saw him pause to look up at the blood-soaked sky. He had left the cape behind him this time, but his clothes still seemed much too fine to wear on a cross-country traipse around an enchanted forest; Bellamy wondered if he had any others, or if an endless supply of beautiful clothes was part of his deal, too. He didn't seem to care if they were ruined, anyway, considering how he’d merrily squelched his way back into his own castle yesterday evening.

Murphy didn’t knock, but rather jumped over the wall into Clarke’s vegetable garden, and without preamble, let himself in through her back door. Maybe Bellamy wasn't the only careless trespasser around here, then.

‘Hello, welcome, please do come in,’ Clarke commented from her seat at the table.

Murphy ignored her. ‘I see you made it, then,’ he said to Bellamy, filling up a glass for himself at Clarke’s sink.

‘Just about,’ he said, honestly. ‘I woke up to quite the surprise, Murphy.’

‘Well, the magic castle saves me from having to do the dishes,’ Murphy replied, before taking a deep gulp from his glass.

‘Another kid was taken this morning,’ said Clarke. Her icy blue eyes stared straight into Murphy’s own pair. ‘And a soldier was here. Bellamy knew him.’

‘Captain Pike is a good man,’ said Bellamy, faintly, knowing this wasn't a fight he was going to win

Clarke shrugged, in a _I don't want to argue but I am definitely the one who is right,_ way. ‘Just thought you should know, Murphy. You were right about the villagers getting uneasy, asking questions. The King has even sent soldiers from the Guard. People are afraid of the Weald, and like it or not, we’re the only part of the Weald they’re able to confront at the moment.’

‘So I guess we’d better hurry, then,’ Murphy said.

‘Lexa told me about a tree,’ Bellamy said. ‘An old oak. She said that it might be able to help.’ A part of Bellamy marvelled at how _normal_ this had become, and so quickly; only yesterday morning he had been as wary of the Weald as anybody else, careful not to ask too many questions, careful to avoid disturbing the spirits he had heard so much about—and now he was talking about finding one of those spirits on the advice of another. But, then again, yesterday morning Bellamy still had all of his fingers and all of his toes.

Murphy frowned. 'That's a great idea. Why the hell did Lexa tell you about it?’

‘Oh, she felt bad,’ said Clarke. 'She's the one who cursed him. Or, well, delivered the curse. She was keen to emphasise that Bellamy cursed himself.’ Clarke looked up. 'Don't tell her I told you that.’

Murphy smirked. ‘I’ll take it to my grave.’

'Shut up, Murphy.’

Murphy kept smirking, and, having finished his glass of water, opened Clarke’s door. ‘Well?’ he called back to Bellamy. ‘Are you coming to visit Old Miss Oak, or not?’

Bellamy huffed, and scrambled for his boots.

‘Good luck boys! Don’t get eaten!’ Clarke called, as they closed the door behind them.

‘So, do you know where this old tree is?’ Bellamy asked him; Murphy was striding with purpose toward the trees, and Bellamy fell behind. He felt strangely nervous, and he didn't think he could attribute it solely to the Weald.

‘Yeah,’ Murphy said, shortly.

‘Are you … is everything okay?’ Bellamy asked, jogging a little to catch up. The sun had set in earnest now, and the Weald began to stir as the birds began to settle. The old familiar hush fell as the two of them stepped back under cover of trees, the air thick with the smell of dying leaves and growing things and woodsmoke that drifted from Clarke’s cottage.

Murphy sighed. ‘Sorry. Just—I had a long day.’ He didn't elaborate, but he did slow to a more reasonable pace, falling into step next to Bellamy. ‘What about you?’

‘Eventful,’ Bellamy told him. ‘Lots of, uh, reunions.’

‘You and the soldier?’ Murphy asked him. He nudged Bellamy to the left, through a dappling of shadow, carefully edging past a fairy-ring of old stone boulders, pale as bone in the gloom.

‘Well, I met Lexa yesterday morning,’ Bellamy said, and tried to keep from sounding grumpy about it. ‘And then Captain Pike came knocking. Clarke and Lexa didn't seem to like him at all, but he was always kind to me. He even gave me extra leave to go and visit my sister after our mom went missing.’

‘Yeah, well, nobody who lives in this valley will be fond of soldiers,’ Murphy warned him. ‘There’s a reason the thorns grow in the Glen. It was a battlefield, once. A long time ago, now.’

‘A battlefield? How do you know that?’

Murphy picked his way between two narrow birch trunks, and climbed with ease up an earthen knoll, writhing with old roots and sprouting clusters of dark mushrooms. He reached down to help tug Bellamy up; his grip was firm around Bellamy’s gloved hand.

‘I was there,’ he said simply, and then he pointed up, to a gap in the canopy of leaves overhead. A shining silver moon was rising; the round edge just shaved off—mere days from being full. It illuminated the biggest tree Bellamy had ever seen, its crown visible even from half a league away, towering over the rest of the Weald. ‘That’s the tree Lexa was talking about. She’s the oldest creature in the Weald.’

Bellamy glanced over at him. ‘You’re saying that like it's a bad thing.’

Murphy grimaced, just a little. ‘She can be… unhelpful,’ he said. ‘Like Lexa, she speaks for the Weald. And you’d know better than anyone how the Weald can be cruel. There’s no guarantee she’ll help us.’

‘But we have to try,’ said Bellamy.

Murphy glanced at him, something unreadable in his expression. 'Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah. We have to try. Come on.’

Moonlight lit the way to the ancient oak, and Bellamy kept close to Murphy. He seemed entirely unafraid of the Weald, but unlike Bellamy, he moved silently through it, ducking past branches that seemed to deliberately swing at Bellamy's face, his tread steady and sure where Bellamy was liable to slip or fumble. An owl hooted directly overhead, and Murphy paused, whispered some old words in a liquid language that Bellamy couldn't name and didn't recognise, then beckoned Bellamy on as if nothing had happened. He seemed at home here, amongst the shadows of the woods, and Bellamy felt strangely safe in his presence.

The feeling of security faded very quickly as they approached the oak. Even the buzz of insects and the rustle of branches seemed to die out, leaving only an uneasy, unnerving veil of silence. Bellamy studied Murphy’s face carefully, watching when his expression turned from calm, to wary.

‘Well, this is a surprise,’ said a voice.

Bellamy swung around to face the source—but there was nobody there. They were under the shadow of the great oak now; up close, it was simply gigantic, as tall as any of the towers in the city; a monstrously large thing. The other trees which surrounded it seemed to bow under its great height, and Bellamy could see great ridges rising up out of the ground where enormous roots extended deep into the earth. He could hardly imagine how far down those roots must have had to grow in order to support the colossal size of it.

Murphy had not jumped at the voice. He didn't seem alarmed at all; just distrustful, staring at a whorl in the old bark. ‘Come out, come out,’ he said, as if bored; Bellamy somehow didn't think he was bored at all.

‘If you insist,’ said the voice.

Bellamy felt suddenly, horribly, inexplicably _wrong._ He heard heavy breathing in his ears, and felt a tightness grab like a vice around his middle. Directly in his ear, the same voice hissed, harsh and guttural: ‘And to whom do I owe the pleasure of a visit from both the king in the castle _and_ the dirty rascal?’

Murphy grabbed Bellamy’s frozen sleeve. ‘Let him go,’ he said to the _thing_ , the spirit, whatever it was—Bellamy’s own chest shuddered with laughter. He realised, with a horrible thrill of terror, that it was _inside_ him. He felt trapped, frozen, caught. He couldn't breathe. The thing in his chest _laughed_.

His own mouth opened, and a voice that wasn't his own said: ‘Why should I? This one is already dead!’

Murphy cocked his head to one side; he was looking straight at Bellamy, yet he wasn't looking at Bellamy at all. ‘You’ve caught it,’ he said, suddenly. ‘The _sickness_. You’ve got it.’

Bellamy's chest felt like it was about to explode. There was a pressure that grew and grew and grew somewhere within his ribs, and he couldn't breathe.

Murphy took a step forward. 'Let him go,’ he said. ‘We’re trying to _help_ you.’

‘No. I need something from him first,’ said the voice with Bellamy’s mouth, and then there were vines sprouting up out of nowhere and forcing their way into his mouth, past his teeth and squashing his tongue, pouring down his throat, choking him, cutting off his breath and crushing his heart. Ink spread across his vision, and the world sank to dark.

* * *

He could smell the sickly sweet of rotting fruit. He was in a darkened room. Something with many moving feet was scuttling around in the walls. A living thing of moss and bark peered at him with beetle-black eyes. 'Bellamy Blake,’ it said—or she, perhaps, for it had the voice of a woman, old and cracked with age.

‘Who are you?’ he said. 'Where am I?’

‘You’re here,’ said the thing, helpfully.

‘Where’s Murphy?’

‘Fretting, I expect,’ said the thing, helpfully. ‘He would want to be careful not to get attached; you're a fragile, human little thing.’

‘What is this?’ Bellamy asked.

‘I’m sick,’ said the thing. ‘I’m rotting. And I need you to help me.’

‘What?’ said Bellamy.

The thing shook its head, thick with curling dry leaves, long twiggy fingers resting upon a gnarled knee. ‘What do you do, Bellamy Blake, when a part of a bush gets the rot?’

‘You cut the sick part of it away,’ said Bellamy.

‘Exactly,’ said the thing. ‘ _Find the rot. Cut it away_.’

* * *

Bellamy was being choked by vines; red suffused his vision. He began to collapse, all the breath crushed out of him, gagging, his throat on fire. He saw, overhead, a sagging branch; white mould was sprouting all along its blackening bark. Frantically, he pointed at it. The shadow of Murphy’s pale, stricken face followed his hand up.

Bellamy was not certain of much after that. He felt very far away from himself, very far away from the agonising pain in his chest. He thought, maybe, that he was dying. He thought, maybe, that he didn't mind.

* * *

Bellamy heaved a breath, and then another; his chest was on _fire_ , but his airway was clear. Beetle black eyes, narrowed, peered into his own.

'Drink this,’ said Murphy.

Bellamy drank.

* * *

‘Oh, very well done,’ said the thing. It looked ill, and weak, and faded, the wood washed out and bleached. With one knobbly, long-fingered hand, it pried its wooden ribs back, and with the other it reached within its own chest, and produced three identical arrows. The branch sprung back, and with a kindly old chortle, the thing pressed the three arrows into Bellamy’s palm.

‘I’m quite tired,’ she told him. ‘That rot has been bothering me for quite some time. I don’t know what caused it, you know.’

‘Is it the same thing that's been killing the children?’ Bellamy asked. His voice was not hoarse, but strong. The spirit of the oak blinked.

‘Like a pool of still water,’ she said. ‘In the Weald, one reaps what one sows. Reap fear and hate, and you poison the ground. And poison spreads.’

‘And what of the beast?’ Bellamy asked. He felt light and airy. He thought he was dreaming, or perhaps, dead.

The hidden scuttling thing was still in the walls, scrabbling and scratching. Bellamy could hear it.

‘The beast?’ said the spirit.

‘It keeps Murphy prisoner,’ said Bellamy.

‘That it does,’ said the spirit. ‘Tread carefully, now, little rascal. Watch out for tricks of the light.’

Bellamy felt the scene break apart around him. He heard the echo of the thing’s voice in his ears.

_‘Remember that here a man reaps only what he sows, Bellamy Blake.’_

* * *

‘Feeling better?’ Murphy asked.

Stars glittered above, but dimmer than they might have been in the light of the moon. Bellamy sat up with a bone-weary groan.

‘The water should have taken care of the worst of it,’ Murphy said, ‘but you might be hoarse for a few days.’

‘What was _that_?’ Bellamy said. Murphy was right; he was a little hoarse.

Murphy pointed to a large branch that had fallen only a few feet away, patchy with spots of white mould; the bark had split open at one point to reveal a writhing mass of black insects and other such wriggling things. The swell and movement of them made him nauseous, and he looked away.

‘The sickness,’ Murphy explained. ‘Whatever it is, it got into the old oak. You pointed out the rotting branch to me just in time. I sawed it off with this,’ and he raised a small switchblade, small enough to fit in a pocket. ‘I thought for sure you were a goner—it's a big branch, and a little knife, and it took a long time.’ He shrugged. ‘The spirit brought you back, though, and gave you water. She also had these to give to us in thanks.’

Murphy handed him three arrows—the arrows the spirit had handed him in his strange dream. ‘I’m assuming they might come in useful, but you're the huntsman,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I'm glad you're feeling better.’ Murphy clapped Bellamy on the shoulder. 

Bellamy scowled up at him. ‘Why are you acting like you enjoyed this?’

‘Just a bit,’ Murphy admitted. ‘I haven't had so much excitement in fifty years.’

'Yeah, well, on our next big adventure, you can be the one who gets choked half to death,’ Bellamy grumped.

Murphy sniffled a laugh, and gave him a hand up. 'You should drink some more. You’ll feel better.’

Bellamy accepted the wooden cup from him, and downed the rest of the Weald water. Then he examined the arrows, with their fine oaken shafts, and delicate silver arrowheads, beautifully made and devilishly sharp. He supposed they had been what Lexa had meant when she’d said that the old oak knew of a way to stop the beast, but he wasn't sure if they made the ordeal worth it.

He could still feel the ghost of the thick vines as they pushed their way down his throat, could still taste ash and dirt on his tongue. He shuddered, and slipped the arrows into his quiver.

‘What next?’ he asked.

Murphy looked up, the hard angles of his face softened by the white glow of moonlight. ‘I say keep looking for just a little longer. There’s only a couple days until the new moon, and seems a shame to waste the light while we have it.’ Bellamy prickled under his gaze. ‘Unless you want to go home? That was quite the ordeal.’

‘No. No, you're right,’ Bellamy said, quickly. In truth, he wanted to get out of this horrible forest as fast as he could—but he knew Murphy was speaking sense, and with every passing moment, he faded a little more. To waste time now on baseless fears would be beyond foolish. He gestured forward. ‘Lead the way, then, Murphy.’

Murphy stayed still for a moment longer, looking at Bellamy as if he knew that he was lying. Then, with a small shrug, he turned and led Bellamy deeper into the Weald, up a low hill and through a snatch of whispering willows, to a gentle ridge overlooking a sweep of downs bathed in blue and molten mercury. There were scarcely any stars left as the moon's glow chased them away. Murphy had been right; they would be lucky to get a night bright as this again.

‘Tell me about your sister,’ said Murphy, breaking the silence. He picked his way along the edge of the hillock; a gentle grassy slope, grey and silver in the moonlights, extended for about half an acre down to another stretch of dark forest. The valley at their backs felt distant and suddenly forgettable, like whatever power it held faded with distance, almost like Bellamy had dreamed the place up entirely. ‘I was an only child, and my parents—well, they died a long time ago. What’s she like?’

Bellamy scrunched his nose up. ‘She’s a stubborn ass.’

Murphy grinned widely at that, glancing over at him. His teeth gleamed and his eyes crinkled. Bellamy’s ears felt hot.

‘She’s the stubbornest person I know. And she’s… she’s sweet. Sometimes. She can be. She hasn't been in a while, I guess.’ He couldn't quite remember how long it had been; at least since their mother had walked into the Weald and not come back. At least since Bellamy had returned from his year in the Guard. Maybe… maybe longer. He hoped that wherever she was now, wherever that spirit had whisked her off to, that she was happy. That she might dance again. ‘...You know the nightbird song, Murphy?’

Murphy crouched low to examine a footprint; Bellamy knew from a glance it was much too small. Not what they were looking for. ‘What about it?’

‘You know the superstition?’

‘Bad luck not to dance?’

‘She used to always make me dance. She’d go crazy. Soon as she heard even the _hint_ of a nightbird song, she was twirling me around like I was a rag-doll.’

Murphy glanced back over his shoulder, and looked Bellamy up and down, his lip curling into a smirk. ‘Really? I can see it.’

‘Oh, ha ha,’ said Bellamy, and kicked the side of Murphy’s boot. His precarious balance disturbed, he fell sprawling into the dirt, dangerously close to the edge of the slope. 

‘Hey! You idiot, look—you’ve destroyed the tracks—’

'I _guarantee_ those tracks were from something else, Murphy,’ said Bellamy, amused, but he leaned down to give Murphy a hand-up regardless. 

He saw the twinkle in Murphy’s eye a moment too late. Murphy took his hand, and tugged, and then the world tilted up and around as Bellamy tipped forward and over Murphy’s head. But he didn’t let go of Murphy’s hand—instead, he tugged him right back, and he heard Murphy’s gasp before the two of them were tumbling, toppling together over the edge and down the slope.

The dizzy rush of every roly-poly Bellamy had ever performed as a child came back all at once; they were spinning and then rolling, and down was up and up was down and all around—the moon and the stars and the earth blended into one, and his heart sang in his chest with exhilaration, a laugh thumped out of him with every bump and tumble of his roll. Next to him, the dark blur that was Murphy was laughing, too, scrabbling at Bellamy’s chest and kicking out his own feet out to catch hold of the ground and slow their jolting descent. Next roll and Bellamy landed on something soft, and heard Murphy’s _oompf_ , but he held on. The two of them together proved a little too much for gravity, and they rolled only a few more slow paces together before coming to a stop, flat on their grass-stained backs, shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the remaining stars and laughing. Bellamy knew they were being much too loud, but all the rush and danger of the evening's events came upon him suddenly in a giddy haze. He felt ecstatic to be alive.

‘You want to slay this beast or not?’ Murphy finally asked. His voice was breathless with laughter.

'Yeah, yeah,’ said Bellamy. He sat up, resting his elbows on his knees, and, because he couldn't allow himself to feel good for any longer than ten measly minutes, took off his gloves.

No fingers. His stomach sank. He looked away from his hand, looked up and over the downs.

There was a shuffling from beside him. ‘Let me see,’ said Murphy, a wrinkle between his brows. He captured one of Bellamy’s half-formed hands between his own, and peered close, prying apart every invisible finger. Bellamy wondered if Murphy’s hands were warm or cold; he could feel the strange touch only distantly, mediated by a thick layer of numbness, like he was still wearing his gloves. It felt nice, though. Murphy was gentle, examining each invisible finger individually, bending the joints and then letting them relax; it felt like a reminder that even if Bellamy couldn't see them, his hands were still there. He still had them. He suppressed the sudden urge to squeeze Murphy’s fingers where they touched his own, and stuck the other invisible hand into the grass, tugging out clumps of it just to remind himself that he could.

‘Well? What’s the prognosis?’ he said, glum.

Murphy let go of Bellamy’s hand, and got to his feet. The breeze ruffled his hair, and bits of grass still clung to his fine clothes, dirt smeared onto his shoulder. The moonlight cast a shadow, illuminated him with silver, like he was made from little more than shadow and glass. Something in Bellamy’s chest snagged at the sight. 

‘You’ve quite the length of arm to go yet,’ Murphy said, without turning around.

Then, he went very still. Even the breeze seemed to pause. ‘Bellamy,’ he said, very quietly.

‘What?’ Bellamy stood. ‘What is it?’

Murphy said, slowly and carefully, ‘Stay behind me. There’s something moving in the trees.’

Bellamy craned his head over Murphy’s shoulder to see, but past the silvery branches he saw only shadows, only flickering moonlight. Slowly, carefully, Murphy began to approach the thicket, beckoning for Bellamy to follow.

Bellamy had always considered himself a good huntsman—the best, even, able to slip through the forest without a sound, able to sneak up on any unsuspecting deer or pheasant without startling them. But compared to Murphy’s velvet tread, his feet were bumbling and useless, and compared to Murphy’s razored gaze, his eyes felt half-clouded, barely fit for purpose. He held his breath as he followed Murphy down to the trees, and still managed to tread upon every loose twig and dry leaf. Murphy didn't say anything, though: he kept his eyes on the treeline, on the shadows only he could see moving within.

There was blood on the grass. It looked black in the washed-out colours of midnight. Bellamy tugged at Murphy’s sleeve to get his attention, feeling like an overgrown infant as he did, and pointed at it. Murphy’s nostrils flared, but he didn't say anything. He looked back at the trees. In that moment, there was something almost animalistic about him; like a predator, he was wary and coiled, ready at any moment to spring.

‘It was here,’ he whispered.

Bellamy followed him into the trees. Dread was running cold fingers down the back of his neck, and an icy fear had seized his heart. He remembered the glowing eyes. He remembered the hundred teeth.

The blood led to a small clearing, a pooling of grey moonlight, and a body, arms broken and splayed, legs crumpled beneath him. And the torso—Bellamy could hardly bear or look at it. White gleam of rib and ragged red flesh. Murphy let out a hiss of horror.

The boy couldn't have been older than sixteen, his big brown eyes sightless and unseeing, his pale white face flecked with red. It dribbled from one corner of his mouth, reddened his nose. He looked so young in death—childlike, delicate, innocent. 

And something had ripped open his chest, and torn out his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this entire thing was born out of my love for cottagecore and the way the sweet sweet musics of hozier and shrek the musical blend together at 4am, so you know what to blame.... 
> 
> it means so very much to me that you read this far, i really hope you liked this chapter as my brain broke this week and i forgot what characterisation or consistency was. as always, thank you so much for reading and for all your kudos and comments! stay safe big love!!!


	3. and west of the moon

Once upon a time,

the valley of teeth had been green.

Once upon a time, the castle had not been a castle at all. Once, there had stood a little house, built from stone and thatch. Its four stout windows glowed warm and twinkling in the night. Once upon a time, a witch and her husband and her son had lived there. And for a few short and glorious years, they were happy; a beam of sun on a darkened scroll of history.

Then the boy grew ill, deathly ill, with some strange and incurable sickness that stole his breath and pinched all the warmth from his cheeks. And no lights glittered at the windows of the house, and the shadow of death hung at the door, waiting. And this boy was loved—loved fiercely, loved deeply, loved from the beginning to the ends of the earth.

So the boy’s father, his human father, with beating, breaking heart and vibrant, generous blood, one night under the light of the moon walked into the dark Weald. He did not come out again. Death left the door and the boy behind, and followed the father into the forest.

The boy lived.

But the house stayed a dark and lonely place.

* * *

Neither Bellamy nor Murphy had much to say as they carried the murdered child’s body back to the village, letting the silent, contemplative moon light the way. He was not heavy, not between the two of them. The night breezes had stirred up a chill. Neither broke a sweat, even as they hurried to outrun the onset of rigor mortis; Murphy’s fine jacket wrapped around the boy’s ruined chest doing little to stem the oozing blood, still faintly warm. Nothing disturbed them on the way.

‘He must have been so afraid,’ Bellamy said, and he was glad of it when Murphy chose not to answer.

Shouts greeted them as they approached the high walls of Cadia; wooden pikes, carved with sharp ends, barred their way in. Murphy took the body from Bellamy, and nodded for him to approach first. He raised his bloodstained gloves, fearful that the guards might still shoot on sight.

Captain Pike pushed his way through the gate. ‘Blake? What is this?’

‘We found him in the woods,’ said Bellamy, feeling suddenly at a loss to explain any of it. Where are the words for finding the body of a child in the woods, his young heart torn from his chest? ‘He was dead. His… his heart is gone.’

Pike’s nostrils flared and eyes went wide. ‘Somebody— somebody get the boy’s parents.’

A shadow broke away from the other guards, and ran into the village. Bellamy ignored it. His hands were covered in the boy’s blood. ‘Sir,’ he said, or tried to, but Pike cut him off, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

‘Who is this?’ he asked, nodding to Murphy. ‘I have the power to refuse entry to everyone and anyone passing through this village, you understand, Blake.’

‘This is Murphy,’ Bellamy said, taking a step back. He realised suddenly that he didn’t even know Murphy’s full name. There was so little he actually _did_ know about Murphy—about his curse, about where he went during the day, about his relationship with the beast. How could he explain Murphy to Captain Pike, when he wasn't even certain he could explain Murphy to himself?

Murphy hung back, holding the body as effortlessly as if it weighed very little. He wore the same expression he had when Bellamy had first met him—guarded, alert, watchful, and a touch smug. There was something unnerving about him, about the shifting shadows on his face and the torchlight sparking against his eyes. It was suddenly very hard to forget that he was three hundred years old. 

‘I live in the valley,’ he said, neutral. ‘I just want to return the body. Then I’ll go.’

‘You live in the valley? Where?’ Pike demanded.

‘In the valley.’ Murphy bit off the end of each word.

‘There are children being slaughtered—’

‘Oh my. Never noticed,’ said Murphy, and shifted the corpse’s weight in his arms.

Pike’s eyes flashed, dangerously. Bellamy stepped between them. ‘We just want to return the body, sir,’ he said. ‘Murphy lives in the valley, and he's been helping me with the search for the killer.’

‘Is he a witch, too?’ Pike asked. ‘I have to say, Blake, I’m not at all impressed with the company you've been keeping.’

Murphy took a step towards Pike, and the night air dropped ten degrees in temperature. 

‘I appreciate your concern,’ Bellamy said, ‘but that company is _mine_ to keep, Captain. Murphy has offered his help, and I’m glad to have it. He’s the one who found the body. He wants the beast gone as much as anyone else in this valley.’

‘Well,’ Pike said, curt, ‘I suppose I’ll just have to take your word for it.’

‘No need,’ Murphy interrupted. ‘I’m leaving.’

Bellamy turned to look at him, mouth pulled down into an apologetic sort of grimace, and something in Murphy visibly softened. Before Bellamy could say anything, he added, ‘It’ll be dawn soon, anyway, Bellamy. I need to go.’

Then an awful cry tore open the morning.

A woman came running, a young girl and a man close at her heels. ‘Atom!’ she screamed. _‘Atom_!’

Murphy’s own heart seemed to lurch sideways in his chest as the lady nearly tore the body from his arms; she crumpled to the ground with it, a broken wail breaking loose from her throat to join all the other hidden and dark things of the forest. Grief crowded close, licking its lips. Captain Pike averted his eyes.

Murphy did not. He crouched down to eye level with the family. He said: ‘I’m sorry. We found him in the woods. He hadn't been dead for long.’

Bellamy found there was something sticky in his throat. He joined Murphy, glanced a hand over his back, and didn't notice when Murphy shivered. His jacket was still wrapped around the boy, Atom’s, ravaged chest, smeared with blood and viscera. He didn't ask for it back.

‘We’ll find it,’ Bellamy promised the sobbing family. ‘We’ll find what did this to your son.’

The mother could not speak for sobs, and the father simply could not speak. But the young girl looked up, her eyes red and her face pale. She nodded.

Overhead, dawn was trailing grey fingers across the east.

‘I’ll see you this evening?’ Murphy said to Bellamy.

Bellamy nodded. He felt at a loss for words, too. His gloved fingers were still sticky with blood. Murphy had a smear of it down one cheek; Bellamy wondered how he hadn't noticed it earlier.

‘See you then,’ he said.

He watched as Murphy turned and walked back into the darkness of the Weald, jacketless and lonely, back to the beast that lay in wait for him.

* * *

_A door into the dark: the branches curved overhead, like a tunnel. A passage straight to the shadowy heart of the Weald. Bellamy could not stop himself, in the thick-throated, half-drunk dream. He had to follow it. He knew what he would find._

_The branches grabbed at Bellamy’s hair, his clothes, his face. Wooden nails scratched against his skin. He kept going, kept moving deeper into the dark heart of the woods, his feet silent as a ghost, moving as if he were compelled. The dream tugged him forward. Maybe this was what it would be like when he finally disappeared, when only the trees and the stars and the moon would know that he was there._

_The beast lay asleep in the hollow; curled around itself like a cat. It could not see him. And Murphy was there, sitting on the ground, leaning against the beast’s side, rising gently with its breath. His head was bowed, his hands folded in his lap. He looked up as Bellamy approached, and invisible or not, Bellamy knew Murphy could see him. Murphy did not look surprised, or afraid—he just looked sad._

Do you want to kill me? _Murphy asked him._

Why would I kill you? _Bellamy asked him._ Why would I ever want to kill you?

_Their voices seemed hardly more than a whisper, muffled and twisted with the soundlessness of dreams. Bellamy waded through honey to where Murphy sat. He ignored the sleeping beast, and he ignored the fear that fluttered in his heart. He crouched down and took Murphy’s hands in his own. They were cold. He must be cold, here in this dark forest. No warmth came from the sleeping beast at his back, bigger than a bear, its curling horns sharp enough to gore a boulder straight through._

Come away with me _, said Bellamy._ The beast is asleep. We can go. We can run. We can go somewhere it won't ever find us.

_Murphy shook his head._ I can't _, he said._ You don’t understand, Bellamy. I can't escape it. It will always find me.

_Murphy stood up. He still held Bellamy’s hands—or did Bellamy still hold his hands? Bellamy couldn't tell anymore, couldn’t tell whose hands were whose, who held whom; Bellamy was nothing more than a ghost, and Murphy--_

_What was Murphy? What was he, really? The man in the high castle, the man playing prisoner to a beast?_

**_Liar_** , _said the trees._ **_Monster_** _, said the breeze._ **_Murderer_** _, said the Weald._

_The dream dropped with a sick swoop, tilting like a boat rocked by a wave, and the beast woke: Bellamy saw a pair of glowing eyes flicker open. The creature rose with a hiss and a rumble, and even the trees shrank back in fear. The tunnel lengthened, and the shadows darted away. Vines wrapped around Bellamy’s ankles; he was trapped in place. He could not run._

Murphy _! Bellamy said— or tried to say, for while his mouth formed the words, no sound came out._ Watch out _!_

_Murphy smiled a horrible bitter smile, a smile like he knew there was nothing he could do to stop what was going to happen. A smile that gave up on trying. Then he let go of Bellamy’s hands, and he took a step back. Bellamy watched, excruciatingly helpless._

_The beast’s jaw closed around Murphy’s head._

Ice around his heart and his invisible hands fisted into a blanket: Bellamy woke up.

The gentle light of early evening filtered in through the window of Pike’s makeshift office. 

It was just a dream. A dream.

Bellamy sat up, fetching his bow and arrows from where he had left them on the other side of the sofa, and swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth. It would be dusk soon. Murphy would be coming back, hopefully with his head intact and still attached to his shoulders. He shook off the images where they settled heavily around him. Every time he blinked, he saw Murphy’s dead eyes, uncaring eyes, as a thousand teeth closed inexorably around them; he saw his hollow smile and his skull crushed—

No time to waste. Murphy was fine, and they were going to stop the beast, stop it before it stole another child, before it ate another heart.

They had to.

The door opened, and Pike came in.

With him was a man Bellamy didn't recognise; he looked harrowed and drained and hollow about the eyes.

‘Good, you're awake,’ said Pike. ‘This is Mayor Jaha, Blake. His son Wells is one of the missing children.’

‘Oh,’ Bellamy said. He didn't want to meet Jaha’s eye, suddenly, aware of the grief gnawing at the core of him. ‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’

Jaha shook his head. A sudden and beatific smile graced his face. ‘He’ll come back,’ he said, with all the confidence of a man insane. He leaned forward to stare Bellamy in the eye. ‘You’ll see. The Weald takes, but so too does it give. I'll see my son again very soon, I expect.’

‘Okay,’ Bellamy said, nodding to placate him, though he couldn't deny that Jaha gave him the creeps. He glanced at Pike; who was sauntering over to lean against his desk, arms folded over his chest, expression dripping with boredom.

‘Take a seat, Blake. I take it you’re well rested, now?’

‘Much better, thanks.’ He had all but needed to be carried to the sofa in Pike’s office after Murphy had left, all the terror of the evening washing over him in a dizzy rush. His throat still ached a little from where the vines had forced their way into his mouth. He suppressed a shudder.

‘Now, about that Murphy—is he in cahoots with the witch?’

Bellamy stiffened where he sat. ‘They know each other, yeah. Why are you asking, sir?’

Pike stood up, ambling over to the window and peering out with absent eyes. ‘I don't have much time for this Weald,’ he said. ‘I say clear the whole thing to the ground. We have vast swathes of land that nobody can use, that nobody even dares to go. But people like Murphy, and that witch—they won't let that happen, you understand? They claim to defend the Weald. The very same Weald that kills children, and steals their hearts.’

‘They have nothing to do with that,’ Bellamy said. The office felt too hot. He longed for the clear green air of the woods, suddenly, or even for the flickering lights of the castle. Pike was gunning for something from him that he didn't feel willing to give.

Surprisingly, it was Jaha who spoke up.

‘Another king tried to clear that forest,’ he said. ‘Or so the story goes. Hundreds of years ago. A thousand and one men were killed in the attempt.’

‘Sounds like he should have left the Weald alone,’ said Bellamy.

Jaha nodded, but Pike scowled.

‘That’s what all the hicks around here say. It’s just a forest, same as any other. All the terrified little villagers, leaving out gifts to appease the spirits and the fairies—you’re the ones giving this place all its power. And look where it landed you. Kill the beast and clear the forest and be done with it,’ Pike said, harshly.

‘That the king’s position, or yours?’ Bellamy asked, coldly.

Pike shrugged. ‘It’s the sensible position.’

‘My boy,’ said Jaha, mournfully. ‘You’ll look out for him, won’t you, son? You'll tell me if you see him? If you see my little boy?’

Bellamy forced himself to look Jaha in the eye. He found nothing there now but a desperate sadness, a thickening dread, a mirror into his own heart and his own fears. His son was almost certainly dead, and soon Bellamy was to join him. ‘I will,’ was all he said. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me—’

‘Wait.’ Pike stood up straight. ‘Blake— _Bellamy_ —I know you don’t want to listen to me. And that’s fine—you don’t have to. I’m no longer your captain. But as your friend, I wish you would take my advice: the spirits, that witch, and the man Murphy—they don’t want what’s best for you or for this village. Their loyalties are to the Weald, above anything else. And it’s a creature of the Weald that’s been killing the children, Bellamy.’

Bellamy rested his gloved hand upon the doorknob. He wondered how much of him had disappeared by now. He shook his head. ‘I appreciate your concern, Captain. I’ll keep it in mind.’

And with that, he left the office and the village and made for the forest, the sun sinking low at his back.

* * *

Once upon a time, 

another crooked king declared a war he could not win. 

Once upon a time,

armies marched on the valley.

Once upon a time,

hell bubbled over in the valley of teeth.

Men crawled down the hills like swarms of silvered ants, barbed with swords and axes and lances. The battle lasted a night. And when the sun rose, the river ran red and lost and lonely souls filled up the green valley like smoke in a bowl. A thousand and one men, and for what? For what, in the end?

No river runs in that valley now. And thorns grew on the battlefield, thick and barbed with teeth.

* * *

Lexa found him after the sun had set. She had a way of appearing out of nowhere, stepping out from between the shadows of trunks as if she was made from little more than smoke. He stayed sitting at the foot of the hollow, his knees drawn close to his chest, his stomach twisting. He wasn’t yet sure who he was.

‘I can hear your huntsman coming,’ she said.

‘ _My_ huntsman? I don’t own him, Lexa.’

‘Yet you’ve been babysitting him all the same.’ She smiled, but only with her mouth. ‘Do you think he’s the one?’

Murphy rose to his feet. ‘The one to what? Break the curse?’ He laughed, humourlessly. ‘There’s no breaking my curse. Was that not what you said, all those years ago? A thousand and one years of penance for Clarke, and for me—’

‘Clarke did what she did to save me. You had no reason to kill those men, Murphy.’

‘I never meant to kill them.’

Lexa smirked. ‘No one ever does. But you reaped what was sown, and you know it. That’s the way of the Weald, and you, more than anyone else, ought to know that by now.’

Murphy brushed past her, chuckling darkly. ‘You know what?’ he said, to her, to the Weald, to the gathering dusk, ‘I don’t think that’s the way of the Weald at all. I think that sometimes things just happen. And there’s no reason for it and no rhyme to it. I think you’re punishing Bellamy for something he didn’t mean to do. I think that you’re not as all-seeing as you claim, because if you were, you’d know that Clarke would have done anything for you. Would still do anything for you. A thousand and one years is a rotten price to pay for love.’

‘And for you?’ Lexa asked. ‘What of your own price?’

‘The curse you put on me didn’t tell me anything about myself that I didn’t already know,’ said Murphy.

Above the canopy of leaves, the huge white orb of the moon rose. It would be another bright night.

He turned back to Lexa. She opened and closed her mouth, seeming for once to struggle for what to say. Finally, she asked, ‘Do you think your huntsman is the one? The one to break the curse?’

‘He’s not mine.’

Lexa looked at him. ‘ _Save a life already lost._ Was that not your deal? And his is a life already lost.’

Murphy just shrugged. ‘I thought love was involved, too.’

‘And you're incapable of that, are you?’

'You tell me.’

He knew he wasn't. He never had been. His problem wasn't lack of love—it was that he had too much of the stuff, spilling out of him. He couldn't contain it. He could set the entire forest ablaze with it. But knowing something, and hearing it said aloud, are two very different things.

‘You love Clarke,’ Lexa said. She took a step toward him. ‘You loved your mother and you loved your father. You don't love Bellamy, but you could.’

‘Since when have you known what I am or am not capable of?’ he asked.

This smile was a real one. ‘You don't love _me_ ,’ she said, ‘but you _could_.’ She cocked her head. ‘Remember, despite it all, John Murphy, who you are when the sun goes down.’

‘Is he the one?’ Murphy asked, suddenly, and with it all the hard casing on his words fell away, leaving only the raw centre. ‘Is he?’

Lexa just looked at him with her forest eyes. ‘Go get your huntsman, Murphy,’ she said, ‘before he wakes half the Weald with his stomps.’

She sidestepped behind a trunk and was gone, as suddenly as she had come. The birds began to sing, heralding the dusk. Distantly, Murphy heard Bellamy's approach, the noise of his steps echoing through the ground like the Weald was trying to signpost him, to turn him into a beacon for Murphy in the gathering dark.

* * *

The boy was now a young man. He had lived for a long time in that cold and cheerless house. But he was clever, and he knew an opportunity when he saw it, and if you took him and opened him up and examined his contents you would find that a third of him was made of witch and another third made of man and the final part made from something else altogether, made from some other, more mysterious thing. The blood that ran through his veins had been blood given to him by the Weald, given to him by the last words of a father he now only dimly remembered. There was something strange in the very fabric of that young man.

And one day, when war seemed inevitable, the young man went to the Weald.

_If I stop the battle,_ he said, _will you make my mother happy again?_

_What might your mother need to be happy again?_ asked the Weald.

In truth, other than the impossible, the young man didn't know what a witch with only half a heart left might need to be happy again. He could barely remember what it felt like, to have two parents who loved each other, and who loved him. Those days were so far behind him now.

_Can you bring my father back?_ he asked, asked even as he knew the answer.

A deep sigh from the Weald, a sigh that passed through the trees, that nodded the heads of bluebells in sorrow. They could not bring his father back. They could not bring him back, for he died to save his son. 

_Anything_ , said the young man. _Money. Riches. So we won't want for anything—for anything else. Anything that will make her happy again._

The Weald shuddered with silent laughter. Nothing could make the young man’s mother happy again.

_Stop the battle, then, boy,_ said the Weald. _Then we’ll talk about magic._

  
  


* * *

As it turned out, he hadn’t needed to make any promises to the Weald in exchange for his mother’s happiness.

He found her dead when he returned from the woods at sundown that very same evening.

In dark moments, he was furious with her for abandoning him. In dark moments, he was furious with them both.

In darker moments, he hoped that in death she’d finally found the happiness she’d lost, the happiness he had, wittingly or not, stripped away from her. _You killed your father. I wish you had never been born. You killed him._

In his darkest moments, he wondered if he ought to have joined her.

But mostly he didn't think of all those lost and happy days now much at all.

* * *

‘You know,’ said Murphy, stepping smoothly out from behind the shadow of a tree, ‘for a huntsman you sure are loud. Can’t imagine there’s a single man or beast within a five mile radius that _doesn't_ hear you.’

Bellamy had an arrow pointed straight into Murphy’s throat in an instant.

‘Quick reflexes, though,’ Murphy conceded, and with a grin he pushed the arrow away.

Bellamy scrubbed a hand through his curls. ‘I swear I wasn’t always this bad,’ he said, a whine of frustration biting off the ends of his words.

‘I know,’ Murphy said. ‘Maybe next time think twice before angering the sentient forest, Bellamy.’

‘Yeah, yeah. So it’s the Weald that’s making me this loud?’

‘Maybe. Possibly. You can believe it if it helps you sleep at night.’

Bellamy huffed and bumped his shoulder against Murphy’s. ‘Big words from a man with a curse of his own.’

Murphy did not say anything for a moment, breathing out through his nose. He hoped that Bellamy didn’t notice. He hoped Bellamy didn’t notice a lot of things about him. There were so many questions he didn't know how he would ever answer—but if they stopped the monster, whatever it was—and if Bellamy lived—if he could be coaxed to stay—if, if, if—

Murphy wondered when his house of cards would tumble. He felt a little aimless, and more than a little useless. He should have a game plan, right? In any other situation, he would. With any other person, he would. But the moonlight teased Bellamy’s curls and darkened the pools of his eyes, and all game plans withered in the face of it. And if he was the _one_ —

Murphy wasn't going to dare to hope.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you a place. You can see the whole valley from the top. Any monsters come crawling, we’ll spot them from there.’

Bellamy nodded. ‘Sounds good. Lead the way.’

Another part of Murphy wondered why he even cared what Bellamy thought. He didn’t owe Bellamy a thing. And he’d given up on breaking the spell on him long ago. If Bellamy _was_ the one, then Murphy shouldn't care.

_Save a life already lost._ Back then, the impossibility of it had driven him nearly mad. How could he ever save someone who was already lost? How could he undo death?

He didn’t owe Bellamy a thing, except he hadn’t had a friend other than Clarke in three hundred years—in longer, still, because it wasn’t as if he was especially popular _before_ —and Bellamy didn’t know—couldn’t know.

The stone watchtower that overlooked the valley was old and crumbling, but still stood, unlike Murphy’s own castle. Murphy set a tireless pace but Bellamy kept up with ease as they hiked up the side of the valley, and though he couldn't help being loud, nothing disturbed them—Murphy wondered if nothing wanted to cross him, or if all the creepy crawly things of the Weald knew, too, that Bellamy’s days were already numbered.

The tower stood at the edge of a small meadow in its early summer bloom. Moonlight fell in angular streams through the trees overhead, scattering pebbles of silver on the grasses. In the distance, they could hear the soft tinkling music of some hidden stream or brook. White yarrow rose nearly as high as a man stood tall, and foxgloves hemmed them in. And there, jutting up on the edge of a low cliff, stood the old watchtower, silent and still and sighing with age.

* * *

In the exact same watchtower, three hundred years earlier, a young man and a young woman drew up a plan.

‘That’s the most fertile valley in the Weald, and in the world,’ Murphy said. ‘You sure you know what you’re doing?’

‘Which is why it’s perfect for our plan,’ Clarke said. ‘The thorns will trap them, easily. There’ll be no fighting, unless they’re fighting their way through briars and brambles. They’ll have to turn back.’ She could be frightening, like this, with her resolve hardened to steel, and sparks of static dancing over her fingertips. He felt like little more than a shadow beside her, a shade behind her. He thought that Clarke could take over the world, if she wanted to.

‘As long as thorns are all that you plant there, yeah,’ Murphy said. His ruined childhood home was visible from the tower as only a derelict stone shell.

‘This will work, Murphy,’ said Clarke.

‘I know,’ said Murphy. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

* * *

Bellamy hurried ahead, a grin breaking out on his face. He slipped through the crack of a door, into the tower. Murphy followed, ducking under into the smooth darkness of the tower’s interior, dripping with unseen damp. Bellamy had disappeared up the winding stairs.

‘This is incredible!’ he called down.

Murphy hadn't been here in a long time. He’d sat at the top of this old tower three hundred years ago and watched the river burst its banks. He joined Bellamy at the watchman’s high perch, where all the valley was spread out before them in a carpet of green and blue, and where the breeze played gently with Bellamy’s curls. He was pointing down to a dark shape on the moonlit valley, to the yellow gleam of a window. ‘That’s your castle, isn't it? And there’s the Glen. And I can just about see the smoke from Clarke’s cottage— this is beautiful, Murphy.’

‘Glad you think so,’ Murphy said. ‘See any vicious beasts?’

‘I could probably see home from here,’ Bellamy admitted. ‘Maybe even Octavia, wherever she is.’

Murphy raised an eyebrow. ‘She’s with the spirits, you told me.’

‘Yeah. I think she always felt more at home in the Weald, than outside of it. Much more than I ever did, clearly.’ He leaned on his elbows on the wall overlooking the valley, his hands dangling limply. ‘Our mom, too. She walked into the Weald one day and didn’t come out again.’

Murphy turned his gaze back out to the valley and the trees, a landscape of silver and ash in the moonlight. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ said Bellamy. He nudged Murphy’s shoulder again, and Murphy was once again struck by how effortlessly tactile he was. He thought that that might have been the Weald’s true cruelty, stripping Bellamy of his tender hands and careful feet first. ‘What about you? Where’s your sob story?’

Murphy could feel Bellamy’s eyes on him, even as he didn’t meet them.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ he said, then, quietly. ‘I don’t want to pry.’

‘No, no, it’s fine,’ Murphy said. ‘It’s just— some of it I _can’t_ tell you. That’s the thing about curses. And anyway, if I told you, you wouldn’t look at me the same.’

Bellamy frowned. ‘Try me?’

A breath, long and aching. ‘I’m the bad guy, Bellamy. Or, I was. My mother was a witch, and my father was a man. And I’m both, and neither, of those things. And three hundred years ago, I—’ His throat closed shut on the word. He couldn’t tell Bellamy the truth. He could never tell him the truth. Not just by the terms of his curse, though—some other force put a stopper on his voice and squashed all his intentions to a squeak.

No. If Bellamy was to know who Murphy really was, he would have to see it with his own eyes. And if Bellamy was the one to break the curse, what better way for Murphy to set fire to any chance he could have ever had at redemption, than by stepping into the light? If Bellamy knew, he would never look at him the same. If Bellamy knew the truth, then he surely would leave. He would leave, and Murphy would be trapped in this valley forever, chained and bound by the rise and the fall of the sun.

‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘I get it,’ Bellamy said, softly. ‘Curses are slippery things. But, for what it’s worth, I don’t think I could ever hate you, Murphy. No matter what it is that you say you’ve done.’

‘Well, the more fool you. I could be an axe murderer, Bellamy. I could have drowned kittens.’

Bellamy had a laugh like the peals of bells. One of the birds answered it with a high cry of its own.

The valley looked peaceful; no shadows moved. Murphy turned where he stood to take all of it in—and there, just behind them, he saw the glimmer.

‘Bellamy,’ he said, amused, and pointed.

The unseen water had spawned fireflies; a galaxy of spinning stars glowed in the night.

‘Oh,’ Bellamy sighed in wonder.

‘We should get closer. C’mon,’ Murphy said, ushering Bellamy back down the stairs; he himself merely climbed over the wall and dropped the forty-something feet to the ground, the world blended to a grey and silver blur for a few breathless moments before he landed light on his feet.

‘Show-off!’ Bellamy hissed, appearing, pink-cheeked, at the door of the tower.

The fireflies continued to rise, scattered like a handful of golden coins across the trees. ‘Look at this,’ said Murphy, and he whistled a high tune, crouching low to sink his fingertips into the ground like his mother had once taught him.

One cluster of grounded stars formed a swirl, and spun; the breeze chuckled in the branches.

‘I can make them spell your name, if you like,’ said Murphy. ‘Well, I could, if I could spell it.’

Bellamy just shook his head, face split into a wide-eyed grin. It was like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Something warm stirred in Murphy’s belly.

And then, somewhere in the thicket of hawthorn trees to their left, the trilling song of a nightbird rose. Just one note. Bellamy sucked in a breath, grabbing Murphy by the arm. ‘Listen,’ he whispered.

Another bird began to sing—and then, another. Within moments, the trees were thick with sound; an entire choir of them, their lovely music trickling down through the branches above them to flutter at Bellamy and Murphy’s feet, orchestrating the firefly-dance, like the very Weald itself wanted to celebrate.

‘Murphy,’ said Bellamy.

‘What?’

‘We have to dance, too! That's the rule!’

Without waiting for Murphy to reply, a pair of arms had clasped him firmly by the shoulders, and gathered him close. Bellamy steered him along in a ridiculous waltz, his gloved fist clasped around Murphy’s own, his other hand pressed against his side. And Murphy couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled up if he tried; Bellamy’s grip firm around his hand and steady on his waist, even if Bellamy had hardly any hands left to grip with. He felt the warmth of his breath on his neck and his ear, his crinkled eyes only inches away from Murphy’s own, and on a sudden impulse he couldn't name, Murphy took Bellamy’s hand and lifted it up over his head.

‘Oh, you want me to twirl, is it?’ Bellamy spun on one toe, his gloved hand tracing circles in Murphy’s open palm, before he surged forward, hand coming up behind Murphy’s back, and _dipped_ him, tipping him back so far he was sure his hair glanced off the grasses.

The birds only sang louder, as if they were laughing, too.

‘This is remarkable,’ Bellamy said, when they slowed to a stop. ‘You’re remarkable.’

Murphy scoffed, shoulders gone stiff. He shook his head, but he didn't know what to reply, and how to push the words away, so that they wouldn't wriggle in under his skin, so that they wouldn't trick him into believing they were true. Murphy was many things, but he wasn’t a fool. He wouldn’t buy into something that he couldn't afford.

He was struck suddenly by some feeling that was half-agony and half-hope, some horrible twist in his gut, something wonderful and unbearable. He longed for all of it to end so he wouldn't have to feel like this anymore; he found himself wishing, strangely, for an end to the world. It would be safe, in having ended, all the wayward possibilities having been snuffed out. It would be clean: a beginning, a middle, and an end, and all of it set in stone, all of it knowable and progressing like it had been planned. And Bellamy would be dead, but so would he, and he wouldn't have to worry about being alone again.

Now, in the moment as it happened, it felt to him suddenly like there was far too much at stake.

‘Of course I am,’ was what he said.

Bellamy was human. Bellamy was cursed. Bellamy would die, probably sooner and definitely later. And, worst of all, Bellamy didn't know what Murphy truly was. Worst of all—if Bellamy meant what he said—then he only thought Murphy’s human mask was remarkable. He hadn't seen him, not really; he’d seen only the shadow at night. He didn't know the truth, not the whole of it.

What would Bellamy think of his face when the sun came up?

Somehow, Murphy didn’t think that _remarkable_ would be top of that list.

Bellamy’s expression was so warm. Murphy ducked away from it. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You don’t have all that much time left to waste on dancing.’

The fireflies suddenly all went out.

The birds ceased their singing.

A shadow passed over the meadow of yarrow and foxglove.

Murphy grabbed Bellamy by the shoulder, staring into the darkness of the woods. A light flickered—something like another firefly, but more orange. More like a lamp. Then, they heard a child’s cry; high and afraid.

Before Murphy could stop him, Bellamy had taken off running, hurtling headlong into the woods in the direction of the light, in the direction of the swamp.

‘Stop, Bellamy!’ Murphy yelled after him. ‘It could be a trick.’ The Weald was full of magic, but so too was it full of mischief. There were ghosts here, and will o’ the wisps, and other such creeping things. There was no promise that this was the beast at all. It didn’t matter whether Bellamy wasn’t listening, or simply couldn’t hear him: he didn’t stop, chasing down the sickly yellow glow, chasing the child’s sobs just at the very edge of his hearing.

The light wavered from between the trunks of trees, tremulous and strange, seeming to blink out at one spot only to reappear at another. And suddenly, Murphy realised what direction they were headed; he knew, suddenly, sickeningly, what was about to happen only an instant before it did.

Bellamy took one step, then another, and another, into the swamp before his own weight caught up with him; suddenly and sharply, he sank.

‘ _Bellamy!_ ’ The panicked cry burst from Murphy's chest so violently it hurt; he threw himself forward onto his hands and knees, crawling forward to where the tar of the swamp bubbled and burped.

Bellamy had sank up to his chest, his normally tan face bone-white with terror. He scrabbled forward to snatch ahold of a vine that trailed over the hungry mud, and clung to it for dear life. Murphy wasn’t sure if he could hear him; still his head was craned toward the glowing light—a will o’ the wisp, a trickster spirit, certainly—which promptly flickered out, having successfully lured its prey to his death.

‘Bellamy,’ Murphy said, urgently.

‘Murphy?’ Bellamy looked briefly confused; then, panic took over again. He clung tighter to the vine, kicking and writhing as if he could fight his way out of the swamp, but his struggles only made him sink faster.

‘Bellamy,’ Murphy said, his own voice hoarse with fear, ‘you have to trust me. Stop fighting it. You have to lie still.’

‘What?’ Bellamy did not stop fighting. He had sunk up to the neck in bog, clinging and stinking and black and viscous. ‘No-- Murphy, it’s sucking me in—Murphy, I can’t—I’ll drown!’

‘Bellamy, _please._ You have to trust me. Do you trust me?’ Murphy stretched out his hand as far as he could, but Bellamy was still inches away from his reach, and tugged further by the vine he was clinging to for dear life.

Bellamy’s eyes were white with fear. He shook his head, mouth pressed shut and lips gone white. The black mud of the swamp coated his chin. ‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘You _can_ ,’ said Murphy. ‘Please Bellamy. You have to trust me.’

Murphy’s own heart felt as though it were ready to burst free from his chest. He reached further, and further, but Bellamy was still too far. He would have to make the rest of the distance by himself. ‘Don't you worry, Bellamy. I won’t let anything happen to you, I swear. But you just have to trust me.’

Bellamy shook his head one last time, and for one heartstopping moment, Murphy was sure he was going to drown. Then he let go of the vine; he reached blindly for Murphy’s hand as immediately his head went under—

—Murphy surged forward, teetering dangerously over the gobbling mud, and grabbed his gloved hand—

—But the glove slipped off— ‘ _No_!’ Murphy shrieked, in horror, in terror, in disbelief, as Bellamy's sleeve sank out of sight—

—He grasped through thin air, and his fingers glanced against something soft and invisible—Bellamy's hand! He grabbed his unseen fingers in his own, reached down for his arm, reached into the hungry swamp. He grabbed Bellamy by the chest and then he _heaved—_

—And with a gasp and a choke and a splutter, Murphy hoisted Bellamy’s body up and out of the mud, and dragged him back to safety.

Bellamy sucked in an awful heave of a breath; Murphy felt the shudder of it where he held him fast against his own chest.

‘You’re all right, you’re okay,’ he murmured, still hoarse, but this time with relief. He shrugged off his new jacket and used it to wipe the mud from Bellamy’s face. Bellamy was trembling head to toe, and still sucking down gasps of air like it was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted; tear tracks cut lines in the mud that remained on his face, clearing a path from eye to chin.

‘You’re gonna be okay, hush Bellamy, you’re safe now,’ Murphy repeated, feeling at an utter loss at what else to do; he was shaky himself, and scared, and he wanted to get as far away from this horrible swamp as he could.

Bellamy pushed him aside, and then he vomited swamp mud up onto his lap. ‘I think I breathed some in,’ he croaked weakly. ‘My chest feels like it’s on fire.’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll get you to Clarke,’ Murphy hushed him, running a hand down his mud-covered back. He was reminded of how his own mother had soothed him when he was ill, and suddenly felt sick himself with dread.

Bellamy had lost both boots in the mud, and both gloves. Somehow, his jacket had stayed on. His clothes were caked with it; it covered every inch of his skin. His bow had mercifully stayed attached to his back, and his sheath of arrows was safe at his shoulder. Murphy helped him to his feet, and was not prepared when he burst into tears—real tears, this time, tears of terror and tears of relief mingled together until sobs convulsed their way through his chest and he had wrapped his muddy arms around Murphy with a desperate grip, a grip tight enough to crush the breath out of him.

‘Thank you,’ Bellamy breathed into his neck. ‘Thank you.’

Murphy shook his head, and wrapped his arms around Bellamy, swallowing down a few tears of his own.

‘Come on,’ he said, gently. ‘Maybe that’s enough excitement for one night, hm?’

Bellamy could walk fine, but if the two of them kept an arm wrapped around the other the whole way back to Clarke’s cottage, well. Nobody else had to know.

Clarke opened her front door in her nightgown, took one look at Bellamy, and swept him into her bathroom without another word, wrapping him in a towel and sitting him on the edge of the tub as it filled. She barked instructions at Murphy: ‘If he swallowed some of the mud, I’ll need to make him a tonic—boil some water, and add a pinch of powdered lemongrass, half a spoon of moon-honey, some yarrow blossom—’ She took Bellamy’s ruined clothes, minus personal possessions, out back, and burned them.

Murphy pretended not to see when he peered in to check on Bellamy in the bath that his mug of tonic floated in midair; he looked strange and half-faded in the water, invisible up to the knee and past the elbow.

‘Thank you again, Murphy,’ he croaked, sinking low in the fragranced water. ‘You saved my life.’

‘No need,’ Murphy said. He didn’t know how to tell Bellamy that he had saved him for selfish reasons as much as for selfless ones: it had barely been a few days, but the thought of another lonely night in his castle, hopelessly alone and dreading the morning, filled him with an unspeakable dread.

He could never have let Bellamy drown; somehow, suddenly, a life without him seemed unthinkable.

He left Bellamy to his soak, and headed out back, to where the muddy clothes still smouldered and glowed. The moon had dipped behind the clouds, and Clarke was quiet and pensive.

‘We should really do something about that swamp spirit,’ he said to her, but she shook her head.

She turned to look at him. ‘What game are you playing, Murphy?’

‘What? I’m not playing any game.’

She raised her eyebrows at him. He raised his own right back. ‘Really, Clarke. I’m not. If I were, then…’

‘Then what?’

‘Then it would be easier,’ he said.

Her gaze cut right through him. ‘What would be easier?’

Murphy shook his head. ‘Everything.’

‘You think he’s the one to break the spell,’ she guessed. ‘ _Save a life already lost._ I guess it makes sense.’

‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’ he told her, and he meant it. ‘Whether he is or not. Whether I’m cursed forever, or not.’

She looked at him long and hard. ‘Oh,’ she said, as if she understood, and then turned back to gaze up at the shrouded moon for a moment, a strange sort of smile gracing her face.

‘I’ve got a bed made up for him,’ she said then. ‘He needs to rest. You can start looking for the monster again tomorrow night; I’ll help, too. Whatever this is, it’s gone on long enough.’

‘Thank you, Clarke,’ he said, and he meant it.

She nodded, and he turned to go back into the house. ‘Murphy…’

‘What?’

The moon had come back out. Her hair glowed silver, and her eyes were dark stars. She looked every inch a witch. ‘I’m proud of you,’ she said.

‘For what? Having a heart?’

‘No. You’ve always had a heart,’ she said. ‘I’m proud of you for having the courage to act on it.’

He didn’t know quite what to say to that, but as it happened, he didn’t need to; she was the one to turn and walk back into the house first, leaving him alone with the bright bright moon and the whispers of the Weald all around.

* * *

It was late afternoon by the time Bellamy woke, the sun streaming in the window. He was naked, which was unexpected, and in the softest, loveliest bed he had ever laid in, which was even more unexpected. He sat up in the narrow little bedroom, a sprig of lavender pinned to the door, and remembered suddenly and sharply the events of the night before. 

New clothes, acquired from who-knew-where, were folded neatly on the end of his bed, and he dressed quickly, finding they were much better quality than the old rags he had been wearing before. A pair of worn, but polished boots, had been left next to the doorway.

He raised his hand to open the door, and registered with a shock that it was invisible; a sick churn to his belly. He had gotten so used to wearing his gloves constantly, had slipped into the comforting illusion that this wasn’t truly happening to him, that to see his handless sleeves, his feetless trousers, hit him like a kick in the gut. He swallowed his fear, and stepped out into the hall of the quiet, homely cottage.

Clarke was in the garden, crouching amongst the rhubarb stalks, talking to them. Bellamy decided not to comment.

‘Morning,’ she said warmly. ‘Or, well, early evening. You slept for nearly thirteen hours, you know.’

‘Long night,’ Bellamy said, lamely, and she laughed.

‘I’m glad you’re feeling better,’ she said, and he knew by the look in her eyes that she meant it.

‘Thank you again, Clarke. For taking care of me—for the clothes and the shoes, and—'

‘Oh, hush,’ she waved the thanks away. ‘It was nothing. A friend in need, and all that.’

‘Friend?’ he asked.

‘There’ll be no getting rid of me now,’ she promised. She had a toothy smile; he found it immensely endearing. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘you can repay me by telling every single one of my rhubarbs that they’re beautiful, and that you love them. It helps them grow. I’m not joking.’

Lexa was nowhere to be seen that day, nor, unsurprisingly, was Murphy, but the two of them whittled a wonderful evening away under the sun, whispering sweet nothings to the plants and the herbs and repairing a sag in Clarke’s garden wall. She made him more of the tonic that had soothed him the night before, and told him of her plans to build a chicken coop.

‘When all of this is over,’ he said, ‘I’ll help you build it.’

She had smiled. ‘I’d quite like that, Bellamy,’ she said.

The sun was setting before long, and with it came Bellamy’s mounting dread; on the first night he had nearly been strangled to death by vines, and on the second he had nearly been drowned in a swamp—suffice to say he was _not_ looking forward to discover what horror lay in wait for him tonight.

As it happened, the horror came to him.

He stood in Clarke’s garden, wondering in which direction Murphy would arrive, when all the birds fell silent once again. He knew at once that he was not alone; a shadow stalked through the trees, a shadow that he recognised, a shadow that he didn’t think he ever could forget. It hissed its way through the trees. It was heading for the front of the house.

He ran back into the house, startling Clarke where she stood by the sink, and grabbed his bow and arrows from the table. ‘It’s here,’ he said, sharply, and didn’t stay to watch her reaction. He hurried through the cottage to the front door, his blood thundering in his ears, and quickly, quietly, opened the door.

The beast stood in the shadows by the cottage; heavy, hulking, exhaling great puffs of breath. And Bellamy was on the move in an instant, moving like a man disembodied; he knew he ought to be afraid, and he knew he _was_ afraid, but all emotion felt so very far away from him now that he might as well have felt none of it at all. He slipped the oak arrow out of his sheath, and he raised his bow. The beast did not move. Glowing eyes stared straight into his.

‘ _Stop_! Bellamy you can't—!’ 

Clarke. She appeared out of nowhere, grabbing Bellamy by the arm with a grip tight enough to bruise, reaching to knock his bow aside—

Too late. He let the arrow fly.

It hits its mark in the bark of an old beech, precisely at the spot where, only half an instant before, the beast’s eyes had been. It moved quicker than anything that size had any right to, sidestepping the arrow with ease. It didn’t seem frightened of him; there was something else, there, something in the curl of its terrible mouth, in the wrinkle of its terrible brow, something—

—afraid?

And the sun disappeared over the mountains.

And a great gust of wind from no direction shook the cottage and the clearing and the woods, lifted Bellamy’s curls and spun gold from Clarke’s hair.

The wind caught the beast by the horns and the hair, and smoothly it sank to the ground—

Bellamy blinked.

—Murphy sat on his knees by the trees, his dark head bowed, a slump to his once-proud shoulders.

Bellamy blinked again. And again. And again.

Still the image did not falter, did not break apart. They stood by the cottage, him and Clarke, struck silent. The birds chittered. The sun had set. And Murphy looked stricken, and pale, and there was a silent plea in his eyes. He stayed crumpled on the ground. He looked small, so small it was nearly impossible to believe how large he had been only a moment before.

‘Bellamy,’ he said. ‘Please—’

‘It was you,’ said Bellamy. He didn't feel strange or faraway now, not a bit. He didn't know whether to cry or to laugh or to run, to flee this cursed valley and everyone and everything in it. Rooted in place by horror, he thought in that moment he would be glad to disappear.

Who was he to think he could ever have put a stop to it? He was going to die. More children were going to die. He had no hands up to the elbow; they were fading out inch by inch. He was half a ghost, now. Who the hell was he to think that he could make a difference to any of it?

And Murphy—all along, Murphy had been—

Bellamy’s voice cracked. ‘It was you,’ he said again, voice shattering in the frozen dusk. 

Murphy’s eyes were wet and glimmering with tears. Bellamy watched as he got slowly to his feet, regret writ large on his features, a tremble to his hands. He didn't say anything, his mouth twisting. A tear ran down his cheek. He looked like he wanted to say something, but none of the words came.

Bellamy was glad. He didn't want to hear it.

‘You’re the beast, Murphy,’ he said, in a voice that had split in two. ‘It was you. You’ve been the beast all along.’

* * *

The young man staggered over a chewed-up carpet of corpses; chainmail under his boots slippery with blood. The battle was over. There were no victors. 

The river had burst its banks in mourning; the trees sighed and shook their heads in horror. _What a waste_ , they might have said, had they a voice to say it with. It didn't matter: the young man had the ears to hear it with. A third of him was made of magic, after all.

_What a tragedy. What a travesty._

_What have you done?_

_What have you done?_

A spirit of the Weald stood in the centre of the battlefield, her eyes smeared with ash and char and earth. With the spirit was a witch. She wore battle armour; her long blonde hair was tangled and stained red. Her hands were black with what she had done, and what he had done with her.

Here is how you stop a war: you sow a field of thorns.

It had taken one witch, and one half-witch to do it, both for different reasons, both entering reluctant into their strange truce. Then they had retreated to the high ground, to the watchtower. They saw it all go wrong. Their truce broke. One left to stop it. The other stayed, and in horror, watched.

Their thorns had risen up out of the ground, hemming all of the men in. Long enough to slow their march, they hoped. Long enough to make them turn back, they hoped. 

Then, for some reason or another, one man had killed another. His blood had fallen to the ground and soaked into the soil like some ghastly elixir. They had sown blood and poison into that earth.

And in the Weald, one reaps what one sows. That was a fertile valley. There, the armies reaped poison. The frenzy of killing leapt from man to man, and overhead the hungry crows laughed.

And the spirit delivered messages from the Weald: the two young people responsible reaped too what they had sown.

‘We never meant for this to happen,’ said Clarke. She didn't plead for forgiveness. She did not believe in her heart that it would be deserved. ‘We never asked for this to happen.’

Murphy did not apologise. Murphy did not plead. The cottage in which he had been born was gone; a tower of smoke to the east, against the rising sun. The river kept rising. Soon it would wash all the bodies away. Soon it would wash all the blood away. Murphy didn't feel a thing.

‘I know you didn't mean it,’ said the spirit. 'Do you think that matters?’

‘It doesn't,’ said Murphy. He was a third-Weald, after all. ‘What matters is what's done. Not what was meant.’

This is what the Weald did:

The witch could never leave the site of her greatest failure. The witch could never leave behind the source of her guilt. She would have to live a thousand and one years here, in the valley of teeth. A year for a life; she got off lightly, some might say. 

As for the young man, the man who was a third-witch, third-man, third-Weald? 

He became half of something else altogether.

* * *

There is a beast in the Weald. He’s been there a long time, for over three hundred years.

He isn't always a beast.

When the sun sets, he shakes off his coat of fur and sheds a hundred teeth. When the sun sets, the beast becomes a man; lonely, afraid, and almost human.

There is a beast in the Weald.

And his name is John Murphy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the fairytale that specifically inspired this is “east of the sun and west of the moon”. i named the chapter titles after it so you probably know. but in case you didn't. it is norwegian and spooky and gorgeous if that happens to be your thing. i also was inspired by “shrek” (2001) but please keep that on the down-low to protect my reputation
> 
> thank you so much for reading as always. big love and stay safe!


	4. a pillar of smoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is dedicated to nico, to elle, to charlie, and to warren, all of whom have said so many nice things to me about this fic; your encouragement means the WORLD to me and my strange little fairytale fic. hope you like it.

It had been a long, long winter, and Bellamy was hungry.

The morning mist gathered in swathes at the Weald’s edge, and the shadow of the deer passed through the trees like a ghost. Octavia shook her head, a restraining touch on his arm. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t care to listen; Octavia was funny about these woods, always had been, ever since she was born. It was like she knew something he didn't, like she understood something he didn't.

He thought about his mother. Dark hair falling forward to curtain a pale, clammy face, a new baby swaddled in her arms. ‘Tell no one about this, Bellamy,’ she had said, said when he asked who the man at the doorway was, who her father was—that strange man with the green, green eyes. There were secrets in the Blake house, and secrets in the Weald, and one day Bellamy’s mother had decided whose secret she’d be happier to keep. The two of them were left alone. And hungry.

Octavia didn’t stop him in time. He let the arrow fly, through the mist, through the silence, to hit its mark in the left eye of the sacred deer’s left head.

* * *

‘You’ve done the right thing here, Blake, even if it doesn't feel like it,’ said Pike.

The office felt stifling and closed-in, the lamp on the table illuminating Pike’s face in strange planes of orange and umber. Little lights gleamed in his eyes. Bellamy wondered, right at the back of his mind, if everything in the valley felt otherworldly at night, or maybe if it was just him that was becoming otherworldly, who was looking at things now with strange new eyes. If it was  _ him _ who no longer fit in the world of the living, who had no place now in the realm of flesh and bone and pulsing blood.

He had run from Clarke's cottage, without waiting for any explanation, without waiting for another word from Clarke or from the beast—from _Murphy—_ run all the way to the village, and he hadn't once stopped to catch his breath. Murphy was the beast, the one that had chased him through the forest. The one that—

Pike's voice brought him back to earth. ‘We’ll capture him before dawn. When he’s human, he’s vulnerable. And then we can put an end to these killings once and for all.’

It took Bellamy a long and fractured moment to register what Pike had said, like his brain, too, was becoming less substantive than smoke. Like he might drift away entirely, pulled to pieces by the twists and turns of the breeze.

‘No,’ Bellamy objected. ‘Wait. Murphy’s the beast, yeah, but I don't think it’s him that's behind the killings.’

He didn't know how he knew this, so suddenly and with such surety—only that, if he could be certain of anything at all, it was that it wasn't Murphy. While he was sure Murphy was capable of many things, maybe even murder, he would never kill for no reason. He wasn't a monster. He wasn't the one stalking children, and tearing their beating hearts free from their chests. How could he be, when Bellamy had been with him when Atom had been killed? When Murphy had blinked back tears as they carried his body back to the village, back to his shattered, devastated parents? How could he be, when Bellamy knew that he was kind, and caring, and funny, in his own stilted, prickly little way? When Bellamy—

Murphy might be a beast, but he wasn't a monster.

Pike just shook his head, smiling indulgently at Bellamy. ‘Of course he is, Blake.’ Leaning forward kindly, he added, ‘He’s got you under his spell, doesn't he?’

Bellamy couldn't help but stare. ‘No, sir. He doesn’t. I know him—he wouldn't do that.’

‘You know him? Yet he never told you he was the beast all along?’

'That's different. He didn't tell me because—’

Bellamy hated the way Pike smiled. ‘Because what?’

Bellamy paused. Why  _ hadn't  _ Murphy told him? He supposed it was some condition of his curse, that he couldn't speak it aloud—but why not show Bellamy? Why not find another way? It  _ was _ suspicious.

And—and well, it made Bellamy’s numbed chest feel strange. Maybe once he might have been able to identify it, that feeling, but now all he knew was that he was… hurt. Murphy had lied, and Bellamy was hurt, hurt before he had realised how much he cared.

(The shift had been imperceptible. He had hardly noticed, and he couldn't understand why not, because it was a sea-change, a reshuffling of the earth and sky. Up had become down and down flipped up; but so sweetly, so comfortably, that he had fallen into the lull of it. He had hardly noticed. He had felt like he fit, even as he felt his life drain unstoppably away like water would pour from the cracks of his cupped hands. Why had the past few days, surely the worst in his life, somehow felt like, if things were different, they could have been the best?)

(Murphy had lied. Bellamy was dying, was slipping away, was more and more dead with every passing beat of his heart—but Murphy had lied, and somehow  _ that _ was the part that hurt the most.)

‘No,’ Bellamy shook his head again. But Pike was already on his feet, arms crossed over his chest. ‘No, you’re wrong, sir.’

Pike shook his head again. He was still smiling. ‘I’m sorry about this, Bellamy,’ he said. ‘But it seems obvious to me that there’s a conflict of interest here. We  _ will _ kill the beast tonight, and I can't have you interfering.’

‘What?’ said Belllamy, still slow, still confused, still a beat behind.

‘Someone will come and let you out in the morning,’ said Pike, and before Bellamy could rise to his feet with his dead, numb legs, Pike was gone and a lock was clicking in the door.

‘Oh no,’ said Bellamy. ‘Oh  _ fuck—’ _

He launched himself at the door, slamming his fist against the hardwood. ‘PIKE! LET ME OUT! YOU CAN’T DO THIS!  _ LET ME OUT!’ _

There was no reply, though he could hear stirrings in the old wood of the building, as if it was just as unhappy to be the thing locking him in, as he was to be the one locked in.

Bellamy pressed his forehead against the wood, and the image of Murphy’s rare smile rose to the forefront of his thoughts. He wondered how that smile would look in chains, would look tied to an unlit pyre. 

He didn't think of the beast, of the prickling stare of it, of the teeth and the blood on its breath. He didn't think he could bear to.

He was such an idiot to have trusted Pike. This couldn't be happening. He raised his shadow of a fist, and pounded against the door so hard that it rattled on its hinges. It didn’t budge.

A frustrated scream tore its way free from his throat. Barely feeling it through the numbness of his toes and the leather of his boots, he kicked the door again, and again, and again—to no avail. The door held firm, and he only felt weaker, and weaker. Soon his very bones would be little more than smoke. He was helpless. He was useless. The door didn't even rattle now, not anymore. He was weak as a child, and he couldn't get out.

Then he turned to the window, and to the darkness beyond, and he nearly leapt out of his skin with fright.

Green eyes peered at him from outside the window. Lexa’s full mouth was pressed into a frown. She tapped a fingernail against the pane of glass with a sound not unlike the scrape of tree branches in a storm.

He felt for the latch to open the window with numb fingers; it was sickeningly disorientating to reach out with hands he could no longer see, like fumbling his way through a once-familiar room in the dark. He pushed the window open just a crack—suddenly all the force he could muster with his useless, shapeless hands.

‘What are you doing here, Lexa?’ he hissed.

‘Rescuing you,’ she scowled, as if the very act of speaking the words pained her. ‘Come on, Bellamy Blake; Pike’s gathering a mob, and I can guess who it's for.’

‘I can't get out. Pike’s locked me in.'

She shook her head. ‘Pike locked a man in,’ she said. ‘You’re not so much of a man anymore.’

‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’

Unimpressed, her eyes flickered down to his empty sleeves. ‘Bellamy,’ she said, and it almost frightened him to hear her say his name—just his first name—in a voice that gentle. She didn't seem angry at him anymore. She seemed almost afraid. ‘A locked door can't stop you.’

Bellamy drew in one breath, held it for ten long seconds, and let it go. ‘A locked door can't stop me?’ he whispered.

She didn't mock him, or chastise him, or act like he ought to have known this already. Instead, her green, green eyes crinkled with sympathy, and perhaps he knew now what Clarke saw in her. He saw the heart that beat underneath all that hard bark.

‘...How?’ he said, finally.

He had to warn Murphy. If what Lexa was saying was impossible, then screw it. Impossible didn't matter anymore. He had to warn Murphy about the mess he’d made.

‘Let go,’ she said. ‘You’re clinging to it, you know. Your humanity. Your old life. Clarke told me you fell into the swamp—did you thrash around? Did you sink? It’s like that. Stop struggling against it, and you’ll stop sinking. You’ve got to let go of your fear. You’ve got to let it wash over you. You’ve got to give in. Understand that you’re part of the wind now, Bellamy. See those moving shadows, the ones you only ever glimpse from the corner of your eye? You’re one of them, now.’

‘You always this cheery?’

'Shut up,’ she said, ‘and close your damn eyes.’

He obeyed. He could still hear her voice, echoing in to him from through the crack in the window. ‘It’s like meditation,’ she told him. ‘Take one breath in, and hold it. Now, let it go. And repeat.’

Bellamy did just that. Again, and again. Nothing happened, except that maybe he began to feel a little bored. And embarrassed. And worried. Murphy was out there now, about to face the wrath of Pike’s mob alone, and Bellamy was practising his breathing? ‘What the hell is this supposed to do, Lexa?’

‘...I’m not sure,’ came Lexa’s glum admission. ‘I don't actually remember being human, or how meditation works. I thought it would help.’

‘It isn't,’ said Bellamy tightly, eyes still shut.

‘Okay. Well. Try  _ listening.’ _

‘I  _ am _ listening, I just don't think—’

‘No, no no, not to  _ me. _ You need to listen to the forest.’

‘Listen to the forest,’ Bellamy repeated, hissing out the words through clenched teeth.

‘Listen to the Weald,’ said Lexa. ‘You know it listens to you.’

‘It does? Well, that’s comforting,’ Bellamy remarked, voice oozing sarcasm. He kept his eyes closed, though. He felt, just about, a draught from the open window tousle his curls, the chill reddening his nose.

'Would be hard not to, considering you're so loud,’ he heard Lexa’s sharp response, and he snorted.

‘Want me to take off my boots so I don't disturb the delicate little evil forest’s beauty sleep?’

A pause. He opened his eyes again.

Lexa was staring at him through the window, a wrinkle in her brow. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘that might help.’

Once Bellamy’s borrowed boots were tossed in the corner, the cuffs of his trousers appearing to be levitating several inches off the ground, he closed his eyes and tried again.

'Listen,’ said Lexa, softly. ‘The Weald is alive, and it’s always moving. Every leaf and every branch, every root and every blossom. The worms that breathe through their skin just under the surface. The birds that trill at first sign of morning. Think about it. Think about all of the life that's here, all the things that you see and you hear, and all that goes unseen and unheard. Listen to it. Listen, Bellamy, to the sound of the wind. You’re part of that now. Listen to it. And step out of the window.’

Bellamy did.

He was on the ground, unhurt and barefoot, the fall from the window having felt like little more than a sudden breeze, there and gone again.

He opened his eyes.

Lexa grinned, savagely. ‘Good man,’ she said. ‘Now, let’s go.’ She took him by the invisible hand, and let him at a brisk jog from the glow and noise of the village, back into the dark of the woods. 

Not before they were out of sight of the village, however, did they hear a great roar. Both of them slowed to a stop, watching as the crowd—visible as little more than an orange glow through the trees—passed out of the village, and began chanting as they made their way down into the valley—chanting something that sounded an awful lot like _KILL THE BEAST KILL THE BEAST KILL—_

Bellamy was glad he had not been able to stomach food for over a day. He was paralysed with horror, Lexa’s breath coming quickly next to him. The mob looked strange and amorphous in the night; just flames and raised voices, a writhing monster crawling through the valley in the dark. 

‘We have to go,’ she said.

‘Wait.’ Bellamy tugged his wrist free from her grip, and paused. An owl hooted overhead, and Lexa turned to face him, one eyebrow raised.

‘Just—quickly—how, exactly, did I do that? Back there, in the village?’ Bellamy asked. He was unsure of what the sharp pang in his chest meant. In fact, he didn't know what any of it meant—only that he knew he had crossed some threshold when he had stepped out of the window, when he had slipped through glass and stone like a ghost.

‘You’re more spirit now than man,’ said Lexa, grim. ‘You can see me fine, right? And there’s no moonlight. Nothing to see by.’

Bellamy shook his head wildly, staring at her—all her colours and her shadows visible to him in perfect clarity—then down at his—clothed—body in horror. ‘What? What do you mean?’

‘It’s not good. But it’s not all bad, either,’ she said. ‘You’re not human, not fully. You’ll be completely gone soon. But in the meantime, it means you can do things that humans can't.’

‘Like what?’ Bellamy said again, faintly. He felt sick at the sight of his empty sleeves, the mud tracked onto his invisible feet.

‘You want to get to Murphy before Pike and his mob does?’ Lexa asked. ‘Well, I know how to get you there.’

'How?’ Bellamy asked. ‘Like you move through the forest?’

He remembered how she had left Clarke’s cottage that day, the one that felt like a million years ago; how she had stepped between dapples of light, and was gone.

‘Exactly. And how you passed through the window. Close your eyes again,’ she instructed, and he could hear the thinly veiled panic underneath her words. They had to hurry. ‘One breath in, and one breath out.’ 

He found that a prickling sensation passed through his spine, something a little like the unsettling feeling he got when he was being watched, yet simultaneously like something else entirely. Lexa took his hand again, and led him forward.

‘Open your eyes,’ she said.

It was easier, this time, to step into the strange, half-there, half-elsewhere world. The trees were little more than dim black things, branches like twisted fingers, roots breathing in a rhythm beneath the earth, which crawled with the movement of tiny, unseen things. Strange glimmers of light peered from around every stipple of shadow. He thought they might be eyes. It looked like the Weald, but the Weald washed out and flattened. Only the imprint, the sense, the atmosphere of the ancient forest was left.

‘What is this place?’ he asked.

She shrugged, leading him forward. ‘Keep ahold of my hand, so that you don't get lost. It’s the same Weald, it's just—the Weald as I see it. The old Weald, the spirit-roads. You could follow the paths here anywhere; to the heart of the forest and back. You’re being transformed, Bellamy Blake, passing from one world to another. Soon you’ll be stuck here, to wander for all of eternity.’ She glanced back at him. ‘Or until a stiff wind blows all your pieces apart, or some creepy-crawly thing makes a meal out of you.’

Bellamy decided not to dwell on that. Lexa set a brisk pace, always keeping a firm hold on his wrist, but he didn't feel out of breath. He hardly felt anything at all. He knew eyes watched the two of them as they went, but he wasn't afraid; he doubted anything would dare stand in Lexa’s way.

‘Were you always a tree?’ Bellamy asked her. ‘How—why does the Weald do this? Transform people?’

Lexa shrugged. ‘Growth and decay,’ she said. ‘That’s all life is. It's a saying here, that you reap—’

‘Reap what you sow,’ said Bellamy. ‘The old oak told me.’

Lexa just nodded, pressing her mouth together for a moment. ‘I wasn’t always like this. I was human, once. And I was in love. It wasn’t Clarke—this was long before Clarke. Her—her name was Costia. She was one of the druids in charge of protecting this place. The Weald is old magic, you know that. But it’s older than that. This was hundreds of years ago, and the Weald was ancient even then. The druids are all gone now. They were fighting a losing battle. Men wanted to tear the Weald down, because they were greedy, and because they were afraid. Same old story, repeated over and over and over. Only, back then, I was one of them.’

Bellamy glanced up at her; she had a distant look to her eyes, a sad furrow between her brows.

‘Costia… complicated that,’ said Lexa. ‘In the end, I couldn’t kill her. And when someone else tried to, I stepped in front of the arrow.’ She came to a stop, and her long pale fingers lifted the hem of her dark top, interwoven with leaves and pieces of bark. On her stomach, just below her breasts, was a jagged, dark scar, dark veins spreading out from the centre like an angry black sun. It was visible even in the dark—though that might have been purely because of Bellamy’s new eyes in this new world. Darkness was no barrier to him now; it was his realm.

‘It killed me,’ said Lexa, simply. She dropped the hem of her top, and the black sun was gone.

‘But you survived? You’re still here?’

‘In a way. I’m not human. The human part of me died for good that day. And the Weald saw my sacrifice, and I suppose it admired that. Or perhaps Costia did something, intervened on my behalf. I’ll never really know. But, in the place where my blood soaked into the earth, a silver birch tree grew. And here I am.’

‘Here you are,’ said Bellamy, softly. ‘What happened to Costia after that?’

‘She was killed later. All the druids were.’ Lexa sighed, a long long sigh in the thickness of the night. ‘The Weald is always under threat. I think that’s why it’s so cruel, so often. So much blood has been shed here, including my own. Including Costia’s. If this place reaps what is sown, how could it be anything but cruel?’ She shook her head. ‘Anyway. Come on. We've wasted enough time.’

* * *

Lexa led him back into the world of the living with another breath in and out; he was rocketing towards Murphy’s door as soon as it came into sight. The gate let out a sharp screech of protest at his rough entry, and the flowers of the garden seemed to cringe back from his panic and his haste.

'Murphy!’ he screamed, the door flying open with a bang as he stormed into the resplendent entrance hall. It felt like years since he had been here first, dripping rainwater and mud onto the carpet, terrified of a beast at his back.

The fire cackled merrily in the grate. Murphy leaned on the banister of the landing overhead, gaze dark.

‘Bellamy,’ he said, stiffly, and then turned and walked into his room. ‘Do come in,’ he added, sarcastically, head turned over his shoulder.

Bellamy thundered his way up the stairs, and into the hush of the bedroom. Murphy stood by the window, the candlelight softening his features, and highlighting his fine clothes and thick hair. He looked otherworldly, in that moment, and Bellamy felt a pang deep in his chest at the sight. He looked like a painting. He looked better than that. He looked like _Murphy,_ strange and funny and warm and cold and so much more than Bellamy could ever put into words.

‘There’s a mob. They’re coming this way. We have to go,’ he said, sharp and urgent. ‘We have to leave, before they get here. They’ll burn this place to the ground, with you in it, if they can.’

Murphy just stared at him. His lips parted a little, in pain or in surprise—Bellamy couldn't be sure.

He felt, suddenly, a terrible wash of guilt, and stronger than that—a fury. He took a step forward, into the quiet, peaceful, lonely bedroom.

‘Why didn't you tell me?’ Bellamy cried.  _ ‘Why, _ Murphy?’

Murphy grinned, horribly, sadly; a grin with no hope in it. ‘Why didn’t I tell you?’ he repeated, as if it was obvious. ‘Because I was  _ lonely,  _ Bellamy! Because I thought it might be you who could break the curse, because I thought that maybe if I saved you, I could save myself. Because I didn't want to scare you. To chase you away. Because I was scared you would leave me, like everybody leaves. Because I—’

‘Because  _ what, _ Murphy?’

But Murphy wasn't listening. He had gone very still, head tilted to one side. The curtains shifted in the breeze. An orange glow outside the window.

‘KILL THE BEAST!’ they heard Pike yell. The mob screamed in response. ‘RAZE THAT CASTLE TO THE GROUND, AND DO NOT STOP UNTIL EVERY MURDERED CHILD IS AVENGED!’

‘They’re here,’ said Bellamy, stupidly. He felt sick.

‘You told them,’ said Murphy. It wasn't a question.

'Murphy—I—’

'Don't,’ said Murphy.

‘MURPHY!’

They both peered out the window.

The mob stood loosely around the castle, the firelight illuminating twisted faces, each man and woman looking nearly demonic with their hate and anger, like a crowd of devils had gathered at the door. Pike stood at their head.

‘I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE, MURPHY! WE KNOW WHAT YOU ARE—FOUL, FILTHY, MONSTROUS BEAST! HAND YOURSELF OVER, OR WE’LL SMOKE YOU OUT!’

Murphy looked supremely unimpressed. ‘I hate that guy.’

‘What are we gonna do?’ said Bellamy, breath coming sharp in his throat.

Murphy swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His façade cracked, he turned to Bellamy, and smiled, weakly, emptily. ‘I guess we run.’

‘They’re everywhere—we’re surrounded!’ Bellamy hissed.

‘You’re half-invisible, Bellamy, and I’m half-witch. I thought you learned this evening that you must stop underestimating me.’ He grabbed Bellamy by the upper arm, took one last searching glance around his bedroom, expression strange and open and—sad—before both of them were toppling backwards out of the open window.

As this was the second window Bellamy had jumped from—or, more accurately,  _ fallen _ from—in the space of two hours, he thought he really ought to be more used to the sick rush of it.

The two of them landed lightly, Murphy's arms steadying Bellamy by the shoulders, and with a thrill in his belly Bellamy felt Murphy’s jaw press against the place between his neck and his shoulder. But there was no time to linger on  _ that _ , because the night sky was opening overhead, and the mob was accosted in every direction by birds, or bats, or shadows—black flying things descended like a horde upon Pike and his cronies, who in their terror, fumbled and dropped both their torches and their fury.

Murphy grabbed Bellamy by the arm, and they ran—ducking between the shadows of people busy batting the shadows away, sprinting out through the gate.

As soon as Murphy and Bellamy had run free of the mob, the shadows ceased; blinking out as though they had never existed to begin with. Furious, Pike rose to his feet; just behind him, through the open door of the castle, Bellamy could see one of the soldiers shaking out a bottle of spirits on the fine carpet, on the beautiful tapestries—he swallowed a ragged gasp, and he let Murphy drag him onwards, past the edge of the glen and up the sides of the valley, in the direction of Clarke’s cottage.

'Wait,' said Murphy, hoarsely. 'Do you hear that?'

Bellamy didn’t know how he could hear it—but he could.  It wasn't with his ordinary ears. It was with some new sense, something that was feeling as much as thinking as much as sensing; with whatever it was that had meant he was able to see the green of Lexa’s eyes in the dark.

Murphy slowed to a stop, his grip on Bellamy’s arm never loosening, as both of them turned around.

Then, to their left, at the other end of the valley, it came. With a sound so colossal that Bellamy felt it in his gut, a great wall of water burst free of the trees and rushed like a black landslide down the mountains. The tsunami looked silver in the night, and they both felt the power of it rumble beneath their feet, holding their gaze and stealing their breath, flattening everything in its path.

‘The river,’ said Murphy, in quiet awe. ‘The dried up river—it’s coming back.’

It came in a torrent down the mountain, and didn’t so much as flood the glen, as blast through it; Bellamy had never seen anything so terrifying. He felt minuscule just looking at it; as weak and as insignificant as a speck of dust. 

As they watched, the river flooded the valley, and the water kept rising. Thorns writhed in the water, like thin, barbed arms and legs waving above the silver-capped waves.

The mob at the castle—now a pillar of smoke in the night—screamed in terror. Bellamy and Murphy watched as they began to retreat back from the flooding river, a furious silver snake roaring through the heart of the valley. The smoke kept rising higher and higher, the smell of burning carried up the valley by the breeze, and Murphy’s grip on Bellamy’s arm only grew tighter.

‘We need to go,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you to Clarke. We need to warn her.’

Indeed, Bellamy could hear Pike’s outraged cry, how he raised his still-lit torch in their direction.

‘Run,’ said Murphy, and Bellamy didn't need to be told twice.

He still wore no shoes, but he didn't feel the roughness of the ground beneath his bare feet. All he could feel was the sureness of Murphy’s touch, the rumble of the new river, and the smell of smoke sharp in his nose. Ashes in his throat, like he was there in the castle as it burned. He wondered if part of him was.

Clarke stood outside her cottage, her arm around Lexa. The two of them were staring at the rising river, and barely seemed to register Bellamy and Murphy’s arrival. Both of them were crying, quietly; tears dripping from their chins. Bellamy couldn't tell if they were happy or sad tears—he didn't understand what it meant, that the river had returned to the valley—but it meant something, to Murphy, to Clarke, to Lexa.

‘You’ll be safe with them,’ said Murphy.  He let go of Bellamy’s arm; Bellamy missed his touch, suddenly and immediately. 

‘Murphy,’ he gasped, thick and afraid. ‘Murphy—I’m sorry!’ He could still taste ashes in his throat. The fire, far behind them as it was, somehow flickered the impression of orange fingers over Murphy’s strong features, as if they both still stood in its shadow. Bellamy wondered just how connected Murphy was to the castle that burned in the valley, if he looked now and could see the sparks still glimmering in his eyes, if he stood before him now and found that the wind that tossed Murphy's cape still carried the smell of smoke.

Murphy’s gaze felt loaded with something terrible, something Bellamy couldn't name. He felt in his chest his own heart break at the sight. 'I forgive you, Bellamy,’ Murphy said, voice cracking, as if he had never even considered doing anything else. ‘You should go. It’ll be dawn, soon, and that river will keep rising.’ Then he turned and walked into the woods.

‘Bellamy!’ he heard Clarke call. ‘Get back!’ But he couldn't look away from where Murphy had gone, so sad and small, trailing ashes from his shoes, even though they had not been inside the castle while it burned.

Lexa was at his side in an instant, dragging him away from the cottage. ‘Come on, you idiot!’ she hissed in his ear.

And then, before his eyes, he saw Clarke—Clarke who had made him tea, who had sheltered and dressed him and healed him after he had nearly drowned in the swamp, Clarke who was clever and gentle and kind—raise up her arms in the gathering grey light of the dawn.

Brambles and thorns burst forth from the ground—and kept coming, and coming. Bellamy felt the earth tremble under his bare, numbed feet. It were as though the very ground itself was screeching, and its screams turned instantly to twisted vine and sharp thorn like one’s breath turns to steam in the cold. Clarke let out one last desperate cry, and the new forest of thorns grew up, wrapping around the old, warm stone of her cottage, gathering thickly in every nook and cranny of the garden, swallowing her home in toothed shadow, a low mountain of briars.

It was impenetrable. It was unstoppable. Her cottage was gone.

She fell to her knees with a broken moan, and Lexa was at her side in an instant, gathering her in her arms as she cried. Bellamy remembered how Lexa had told him that Clarke had made herself a home in this valley.

A home she’d just had to destroy.

The chanting of the mob grew closer; a yellow glow at their backs, where the grey glow of dawn beckoned at their fronts.

Bellamy could still smell smoke.

_ Murphy. _ He turned to the shadows of the woods, and he ran.

Murphy had trailed ashes into the forest with every footprint, had left a trail of black crumbs to follow; with a start, Bellamy realised Murphy was homeless. With a start, Bellamy realised that he was responsible. His guilt paled in the face of his desperation.

Everything was falling apart in his useless, invisible hands.

It didn't take Bellamy long to find him; bent double in a narrow clearing, hand braced against a tree. Murphy was crying, Bellamy saw, heaving with it, like the sobs rattled and clawed their way free from his chest. 

Bellamy’s own chest ached, and not just because he was out of breath. He felt hardly human now, more ghost than man. The wind passed straight through him, and the hand that clamped down on Murphy’s shoulder was numb as rubber, and cold as ice. His own flesh was making strange with him. How long, now? How long until he was gone for good, trapped in that slithery half-world, waiting to be torn apart by the breeze?

‘What?’ Murphy said, voice thick. ‘What do you want now, Bellamy?’

‘I know,’ Bellamy gasped out, unsure if it was the exertion or the desperation that stole the breath from his lungs. ‘I know it wasn't you.’

Murphy turned around, big eyes wet and glimmering. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘You didn’t kill those children because you’re not a monster.’

Murphy took a step forward, sizing Bellamy up, so close that his nose could have brushed Bellamy’s own, so close that Bellamy couldn't have torn his gaze away from Murphy’s heavy-lidded eyes, his thick black lashes, even if he wanted to. ‘What makes you say that?’ he said again, quiet and dangerous—and only half-true.

‘Because I know you,’ said Bellamy, holding his stare. 'I'm sorry I ever thought—I'm sorry I ever told Pike about you. He wouldn't listen, when I said it wasn't you. I'm sorry. I've—I've ruined everything. But I know now—it isn't you. It never was you.'

Glimmers of green shifted in Murphy’s strange, almost colourless irises. Like the forest was creeping in. Bellamy thought he could disappear into them; that maybe he was disappearing into them already, like he had passed through the window earlier like a ghost, like he had passed through the forest like a shade. A part of him longed to; a part of him longed to lose himself here, if he was to lose himself at all. If he could escape the strange netherworld, and stay here with the shadow of Murphy, instead.

Murphy huffed a laugh. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you don't know me. You’re, what, twenty-five? I’m three hundred years old. You don’t know me, Bellamy. You’ve spent  _ three days _ with me. You don’t know who I am or what I’ve done. How could you, when your life is just beginning, and mine is so long overdue an end? You killed the two-headed deer and you landed yourself with a nasty curse, and then you came here and you thought you could slay a beast? You’re a fool, and worse: you’re a reckless, careless one, not caring if you destroy the world in your attempt to save it. How the  _ hell _ could  _ you _ presume to know a thing about who I am?’

The inch between them felt charged with everything that went unsaid. It rose all the hairs on the back of Bellamy’s neck, gathered a hush close around them in the darkling woods, the threat of dawn looming in the east. Maybe the rest of the world existed, but not here, not now. Maybe the rest of time existed, but not here, not anymore; not in this place, these woods, this valley. Three days felt like an eternity. Bellamy felt he had known Murphy for a hundred years. He hardly dared to breathe.

_ A reckless, careless fool. _ The words didn’t sting, strangely, but Bellamy supposed he had very little flesh left to wound. He was a fool, sometimes, and he was careless, and he was reckless, and his mistakes would dog his steps for as long as he lived—which he doubted, now, would be very long. And he  _ was _ young—but Murphy—Murphy—

He might have gotten angry, once. He might have snapped back at Murphy, once. But that version of him was as dead to him now as the two-headed deer he had slain, because he was hungry, because he hadn't listened to his sister, because he hadn't  _ looked _ at the thing he was pointing his arrow at. Because he had acted without thinking.

He was a dying man now because he had been a blinded man before; he didn't see what he didn't want to see.

Murphy was homeless now, because Bellamy hadn't  _ looked _ . He wouldn't let Murphy trick him into not seeing him, not now. Not anymore. He saw him. He saw every inch of him.

‘You’ve done very little living in those three hundred years,’ Bellamy said, softly and carefully. ‘Don’t pretend like you have. You’ve been stuck in a stasis, Murphy—you've been  _ surviving _ . Not living. Stuck in that castle alone, with only the odd visit to Clarke for company.’ He didn’t back down. ‘I’m sorry that I told Pike about you. I’m sorry—I’m so  _ sorry _ , that I didn’t trust you, Murphy. I was wrong. I know that it wasn’t you. And I know you’re saying these things to me because you want to, I don’t know, drive me away. You’re telling me this so that I’ll go.’

Murphy was close enough that his breath warmed Bellamy’s nose.

‘I’ll leave,’ said Bellamy. ‘If you want me to. Do you want me to leave?’

Murphy swallowed. Dawn was bleeding into the sky overhead. No birds sang. None dared.

He was dying. He was already dead. And he wasn't afraid of this. He wasn't afraid of Murphy. What would be the point of being a dead man, if he was still afraid of doing what he wanted to do? What he had wanted to do for what felt like a very, very long time? 

‘Tell me to leave,’ Bellamy whispered. 

He reached up with his invisible hand, ran his thumb across the bump of Murphy’s cheekbone. His arms and legs were numb but his stomach was doing somersaults. Murphy’s endless eyes stared into his; his lips parted, struck silent. He didn't say a thing.

‘Tell me to go,’ Bellamy whispered.

Murphy didn't say a thing.

The kiss started gentle. Then, suddenly, it was open-mouthed and afraid and desperate, desperate with some emotion neither of them could name. Murphy snatched Bellamy’s invisible fingers with his own in a grip so tight that Bellamy was almost glad his hands had long gone numb, for he was sure it would have hurt. He moved forward, never breaking the kiss, pushing Murphy back to rest against a tree. He leaned into the solid shape of him, pressing him against the bark, like he couldn't get close enough. Murphy had all the shape that Bellamy now lacked; he almost imagined he could regain some of what had been stolen from him if he got close enough. He knew that if he could, Murphy would give it to him. 

It was terrifying, the feeling, like the ground was falling away from underneath his feet, and Murphy’s mouth on his, Murphy’s hands in his, Murphy’s chest rising and falling flush against his own, were the only things that kept him rooted to reality.

It was terrifying, suddenly, to be fading away.

Murphy’s hands held his, and he was kissing him, and there was a fire in his gut and an ache in his chest, but the rest of him didn't feel anything at all. Bellamy’s heart thundered. His pulse was poisoned. He knew he would be a shadow by nightfall. He had wasted so much time.

If he tried, he wondered if he could speed it up. If he could disappear again, like Lexa had taught him, right here and now, crushing Murphy to the tree, testing his own tongue against the sharpness of Murphy’s teeth. He wondered if he could climb into Murphy’s skin and stay there for good.

Hands on his chest, pushing him back. He opened his eyes.

‘I have to go,’ said Murphy. He wasn't looking at Bellamy.

Bellamy felt his stomach sink. ‘Murphy—’

‘It’s dawn. Go. I don't want you to see this,’ said Murphy.

‘Murphy, look at me,’ Bellamy said.

Colourless eyes, but for the creeping green. Bellamy wondered if Murphy was as afraid as he was.

‘I’m staying,’ said Bellamy. ‘We’ll find what’s been killing the children. We’ll stop Pike. And we’ll do it today.’

‘Today,’ said Murphy, and it pained Bellamy to see how unsure he looked, how tentative; he was a shadow of the strange and blithe man who had caught Bellamy intruding into his castle, and only laughed. 

He squeezed Bellamy’s hands, and then stepped backwards out of the shadow of the trees, and into a pool of cool morning light filtering down from above. 

He took a breath. Bellamy saw his chest rise and fall. Then he turned around, once.

And he grew. And grew. And grew. He turned around once, and when he came back around a beast stood in his place; all teeth and hair and shaggy haunches, with claws like knives and shoulders as high as Bellamy was tall.

The beast spoke; a rumble of a voice, strange to Bellamy’s ears. No trace of Murphy in it.

‘Are you afraid?’

‘No,’ said Bellamy. He wasn't.

Because the eyes that glittered at him from above a dark snout and row upon row of jagged teeth—Bellamy would know them anywhere. Bellamy would never forget them.

‘Then let’s go,’ said the beast, and he crouched low to allow Bellamy to climb up and onto his back. He gathered his hands in the warm darkness of the beast's fur, and felt the raw power of its muscles as it rose up beneath him.

‘I’m not afraid,’ Bellamy told him, again. 'Not of you. Not anymore.’

‘I know,’ said the beast.

Together, they stepped deeper into the Weald, quiet and still and slowly brightening with the dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took SO long ... i can't promise another quick update, but i can promise it will NOT take another two whole months (sorry!)
> 
> if you liked this pls let me know i'm so nervous about it. lot of moving parts. also there was a kiss and i do be scared about writing those.
> 
> as always thanks for reading and hope you can stay safe x


	5. one more day to stay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: violence, character death

_She wept and took it ill, but there was no help for it; go he must._

_Then she asked if she mightn't go with him._

_No, she mightn't._

– East of the Sun and West of the Moon

* * *

  
  


The shadow on Murphy's back didn't weigh a thing. It wasn't the lightness of his load that drove him faster; it was the _why_ of it. Bellamy wasn't a small man. He should not have felt as little as a child upon Murphy’s back, shouldn't have been less than a gust of wind over his shoulders, as above them the sun stained the sky red, and every faint heartbeat Murphy heard counted down to Bellamy’s doom.

The memory of the kiss still thrummed like lightning under his fur, a memory tainted and bittersweet by the desperation that laced it. Bellamy’s invisible hands in his own—Bellamy’s lips—Bellamy’s fading warmth—Bellamy Bellamy Bellamy—dying. Soon lost to the Weald, to the one realm where Murphy couldn't follow him. And Murphy would follow him, if he could. He would follow him to the ends of the earth.

He was running out of time. _They_ were running out of time.

‘Where are we going?’ Bellamy asked. Even his voice seemed lessened, seemed weaker, insubstantial. An echo of a thing.

‘To see an old friend,’ said Murphy. He padded his way through the trees, and deeper into the Weald. Nothing stood in his way; he was the fabled beast, the king of these woods, crowned by horns and teeth. Even the roots of the trees shrank back at his approach, deft-footed as a cat, keen-eyed as a hawk, fearsome as a bear, all that power and fury barely held back, a rumbling mass in his chest.

‘Who?’ Bellamy asked, and when Murphy raised his head, the narrow line of his snout pointed in one direction.

The old oak was visible even from here; tall as a mountain, leaves dipped in scarlet and gold by the rise of the sun. Murphy remembered the stern, dark-eyed spirit of the tree as she had lifted Bellamy’s limp head, and forced Weald-water down his throat. He remembered how amused she had seemed at his desperation, as if she knew something Murphy didn't. He supposed now that she had. He supposed now that a part of him had loved Bellamy even back then, as if he knew that it was meant to be. _Once upon a time,_ or so the stories went, as if the ending was written before the tale had even begun.

He had a feeling he was marching toward an ending. He just wasn't certain what sort.

‘Indra,’ said Murphy. ‘Her name. It’s Indra.’

‘Indra,’ Bellamy repeated, and Murphy sensed rather than saw how his hand rose to touch his throat, as if in memory of the vines that had choked him half to death—a few days ago, a small eternity ago. ‘I still have two of the arrows she gave me left,’ he said. ‘Two arrows to kill the monster with.’

‘We’re not going to her about the arrows,’ said Murphy.

‘Then what are we going to her for?’

‘For the truth.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Bellamy, and he ducked low to avoid the twiggy grasp of a branch. His voice sounded right above Murphy’s ear, and Murphy tried not to let the stir of fondness and the bite of grief distract him. ‘What truth?’

‘Do you know,’ Murphy asked, ‘how I became a beast?’

‘You were cursed, I assumed. Cursed like me,’ Bellamy said.

‘Yes. But do you know why?’

A shake of Bellamy’s head. The barely there movement echoing down Murphy’s bones.

‘Indra is the oldest tree in this forest—but she isn't the most powerful. There’s another. The second oldest. The wishing-tree. I visited it once, when I was younger. Human. A boy. It might know more about the monster than Indra does, but the Weald guards its secrets close. Indra is the only one who knows the way.’

An invisible hand curled around one of Murphy’s horns. Bellamy leaned forward, almost tentative. ‘What did you wish for?’

Murphy laughed, mirthlessly, and wondered if Bellamy’s numb flesh could feel the rumble of it underneath him. ‘For my mother to be happy again. It didn’t matter; that evening, when I got home, she was dead. But I had promised the Weald I would protect it, in exchange for my mother’s happiness. Maybe the Weald killed her—maybe death was the only thing that could bring her that happiness. Maybe that was the only way she would ever get to see my father again—but it doesn't matter. What matters is, even back then, I knew that you don't break a promise to the Weald.’

‘So you protected it,’ said Bellamy.

‘I killed for it. Myself and Clarke both. We didn't mean to—we merely meant to trap the thousand and one soldiers in the valley. Surely, if their siege against our wall of thorns went on for long enough, they might give up. But we had used the Weald’s magic to enchant the ground, to build up that very same wall of thorns. And in a moment of frustration, one soldier murdered another. And that blood, shed by murder—it fell to the ground. The ground we made so fertile—so receptive. It—blood was _sown_ , Bellamy, and—’

‘And so too was it reaped,’ Bellamy whispered. ‘But that wasn't your fault. You never meant for that to happen. You didn't cause one soldier to kill another.’

‘Just like you never _meant_ to kill the two-headed deer,’ Murphy replied. ‘It doesn't matter to the Weald, what one’s intentions are. Blood unjustly shed still poisoned the valley—and Clarke and I were cursed with a twisted version of what we had wished, and what we had promised. A thousand and one years protecting the poisoned valley. A witch, trapped here with the spirit she loved, and a beast with all the riches he thought might once have made him happy.’

Bellamy sighed above him. Murphy felt strangely raw after his confession, like he had scraped something of himself away, like he had revealed more than he had meant. But he still hadn't told Bellamy the final part of the curse. He didn't know if he could.

_Save a life already lost._ His father had done that, once, had given up his own life in exchange for that of his son—but Murphy wasn’t the man his father was. And Bellamy may have kissed him, back there, in the clearing—but a kiss was not the same thing as _love._

He imagined himself asking it, now, as the sun rose over the mountains. _Do you love me, Bellamy?_ His voice would ring out in the quiet of the morning. Bellamy would draw in a breath to answer. But the dream ended there; Murphy could not imagine the answer. He didn’t dare.

Three hundred years alone had taught him one thing above all else: that hope was a treacherous thing.

‘Are you alright up there?’ he asked, instead.

Bellamy took a long time to answer.

‘I don't think I'll be coming down,’ he whispered.

‘What do you mean?’ Murphy asked, slowing to a stop. He turned his head to the side, and gazed up at Bellamy’s slumped shoulders, his greying face.

The hand that braced itself on his horn tightened. ‘I don't think I can,’ Bellamy told him. ‘I—I can't feel my legs, Murphy. I don't—I don't think I can walk. I don't think I’ll be coming down.’

  
  


* * *

A _very_ loud knock on the door interrupted the silence of the Jaha household, disturbing the dust that had gathered on the surfaces of his fine-wrought furniture. Thelonious had dismissed all his staff. Nobody cleaned. He rarely cooked. Food went rotten in the pantry, and ants marched in their neat battalions across his hardwood floors. Jaha lived in the old house alone with his thoughts, settled companionably with his grief—until rude knocks chased the quiet away. With a weary sigh, the Mayor rose to his feet.

‘Mr. Pike,’ he greeted, genial, but the man at the door only scowled in response.

‘ _Captain_ Pike,’ he corrected, short and brusque. ‘You’re just about cuckoo enough to know, what with all your talk of kings and curses.’

‘What do you want, _Captain?_ ’ Jaha said.

‘Blake’s gone. Off with that god-forsaken beast, with that—that _Murphy_.’ Pike’s eyes flashed, livid. Jaha supposed he was not used to losing the fox during the fox-hunt. ‘Where in those wicked woods do you think a man and a beast might be found?’

Jaha let the words sit for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said, faintly. ‘I suspect I do know where they have gone.’

‘And where would that be?’ Pike’s impatience bit through his tone, and some part of Jaha that had not rotted away entirely wanted to smile, to draw out his answer, to mock this righteous, ruthless man.

But the rest of Thelonious Jaha was gone. It was with his son; it was wherever Wells’ body lay, decaying, sinking, swallowed back down into the earth. The shell of Thelonious Jaha that was left behind smiled hollowly at Captain Charles Pike.

‘I can take you there. I know the way.’

* * *

Murphy ran, Bellamy clinging to his horns. He knew it was futile, running like this—as if he could outrun the steady path of the sun, tracking its way so fast across the blue vault of the sky—as if he could carry Bellamy to safety even as every breath his passenger took rattled in his lungs—the way Murphy sensed time slipping unstoppably through the neck of the hourglass—the way he was so, so afraid one gust of wind would knock Bellamy from his back and carry what remained of him away. 

Indra was waiting for them. She sat against the tree— _her_ tree, the rotten branch Murphy had sawed free still lying where it had fallen; dry, dead wood split open, leaves wilted and brown.

‘So you’ve figured it out,’ she said.

Murphy bristled a little. ‘Figured what out? The monster? Have _you?’_

Indra only tilted her head. ‘The answer is there. Both of you know it. Both of you have seen it, you know, but each from a different side.’

‘Could you stop speaking in riddles?’ Bellamy demanded, and the spark of his anger strengthened his voice so much that for a moment, he almost sounded whole again.

Yet Indra only smiled.

‘You don't remember the way, do you, Murphy?’ she said. ‘I told you where to find it, once.’

‘Where to find what?’ Murphy asked, but he thought that, despite all of Indra’s cryptic hints, he might already know what she was talking about. ‘You mean the wishing-tree.’

‘Nobody ever remembers the way,’ she muses. ‘I led your father there, once, and then I led you.’

'Lifetimes ago,’ said Murphy. ‘I was somebody else back then.’

‘It wouldn't matter. The wishing-tree stays hidden. Are you looking to make another wish?’ she asked, and her eyes flickered up to the shadow on Murphy’s back. He wondered how stark Bellamy’s fading appeared in the clear light of day. The wind already passed straight through him; Murphy felt how it tossed the fur of his back. ‘You know you can't,’ Indra continued. ‘You know the Weald promises only one wish. And yours was all used up on the life of mother already-dead, on a hope already-lost.’

‘What if I were to make the wish?’ Bellamy asked. A slight shift of weight. A raised chin. Some last well of defiance, rippling through Bellamy. Murphy wanted to laugh, and he wanted to cry, and he wanted to kiss Bellamy’s mouth where he sat up straight in the face of his own growing weakness, in the face of his own doom. Murphy loved him, he realised, and it wasn't a realisation at all. ‘Am I entitled to a wish? Am I entitled to learn the way?’

Indra’s face broke into a sly smile. Beetle-black eyes, mossy face. Murphy wondered if some day Lexa would look like her—more tree than woman. More Weald than human.

‘One wish, Bellamy Blake, and the two arrows you have left. That’s all you’ll have.’ Her gaze was full of something that Murphy couldn't name, heavy with it. ‘It doesn't seem like much, not in the hands of a dying man—but we all know that armies have been slaughtered by less.’

Then, Indra was gone.

And a boy came around the corner of the wide, wide trunk. He was half-translucent in the daylight, but Murphy knew he would recognise those ice-blue eyes, that gawky nose, anywhere. This ghost was familiar to him. He knew this ghost’s name.

‘Murphy?’ Bellamy whispered. ‘Is that…?’

The little boy smiled, and beckoned for the two of them to follow him. 

‘Yes,’ said Murphy, remembering the countless mornings he had seen him flitting through the trees, the mornings he had heard the haunting peals of his own young laughter.

The ghost of a boy who still had a father and a mother and a home. The ghost of a boy who knew nothing of beasts, and curses, and wishing-trees. The ghost of a boy who did not die, but may as well have.

Murphy and Bellamy followed the ghost deeper into the Weald, as the sun hurried across the sky above.

* * *

Under the light of the moon, digging with his bare hands and the blade of his knife, a man buried a human heart in the ground.

‘There!’ he cried, voice hoarse from crying, once the deed was done. Then he rose to his feet, and yelled, at the impassive ash tree, and the impassive moon. ‘Is this not what you wanted? Is this not what we agreed?’ Eyes charged, showing too much white, maddened, he turned to the tree. ‘Is this not what you asked of me?’

He did not look at her, even as he felt her look at him.

The young girl. She lay still. Her glassy eyes seemed to stare at him, even in death. Her chest—torn open, ribs prised back—glistened black and silver in the dark. She was an orphan. No one would miss her.

The ash tree did not speak, even if Thelonious Jaha knew how it could. It did not answer him.

A sudden, dizzy rush as all the adrenaline left him. Bereft and hollow, he sank to his knees. ‘You promised,’ he whimpered. ‘You promised me you would bring him back. I paid your price—a life for a life. I paid your price. Now bring my son back.’

Then he heard it. Footsteps: _Squelch. Squelch. Squelch._

‘My boy. I’ll see my boy again?’ he whispered.

And the old ash spoke, in a strange voice that was not quite its own: _I promised I would bring him back from the dead. I did not promise you would see him again._

The man turned around.

Drenched in the thick black mud of the bog in which he had drowned, stood the thing that had once been Thelonious Jaha’s son. It opened its eyes, clear and bright in a mud-smeared face. They glowed a sickly sort of green in the dark.

Jaha scrambled back, his own heart in his mouth, the girl’s blood itching his hands.

_What have you done?_ said the spirit of the ash tree. It sounded afraid. It sounded terrified. It raised one mud-coated hand, and for a moment Jaha fancied the mud to be blood. It could be. They were the same colour in the washed-out moonlight. _What have you done? What have you done to us?_

There is a saying, in the Weald, that one reaps what they sow. And an innocent life had been taken, and an innocent heart had been planted between the roots of the wishing-tree.

* * *

The ghost boy, with his tinkling laugh and his cheeky gaze back over one narrow shoulder, led them to the bog where Bellamy had once almost drowned.

‘Of course,’ said Murphy, a disbelieving laugh rumbling through his chest, and whistling through his sharp, sharp teeth. ‘How did I forget? The will-o’-the-wisp guards the wishing tree. Nobody could stumble upon it by accident. They have to know the way through the swamp.’

‘Good to know,’ came Bellamy’s weak, wry voice from above him, and Murphy snorted a laugh.

‘You’ll forget all about it, too,’ he promised. ‘Maybe not the near-death experience—but that this is the way to the wishing tree. No one remembers the way, not once they've come and gone.’

‘Except one,’ corrected Murphy’s ghost.

The two of them—man and beast—shared a gasp. But the little boy didn't notice; he continued to skip lightly from stone to stone, silent as if he’d never spoken at all.

‘What,’ Murphy felt, rather than heard, Bellamy swallow, ‘what does that mean?’

‘I don't know,’ Murphy said, ‘and I don't think he’s going to tell us.’

The boy smiled, and it ached something awful in Murphy’s chest. He had been so young when his father died. So young when all the kindness in his mother’s heart fled. Just a boy, when he had woken up alone, fever broken, to a nothing but grief and a hollowed-out home.

‘I think I recognise this place,’ said Murphy.

The ghost-boy slowed to a stop. Silently, he pointed down a narrow path in the forest, where the trees curved over one another as if to form a tunnel.

Bellamy felt a flash of déja-vu. A half-forgotten dream, a tunnel into the dark, and Murphy curled up by the beast’s side, asking him, _do you want to kill me, Bellamy?_

‘I recognise this place, too,’ he said, from atop Murphy’s back.

The boy pointed again, as if to say: _This is as far as I go._

The two of them paused at the mouth of the dark tunnel, for just one moment. Then, Bellamy leaned forward and squeezed Murphy’s neck between his arms, and he hoped that the gesture would say everything that words could not.

Together, they stepped into the darkness of the tunnel. And then they heard a laugh—a child’s laugh, cruel and mocking—echo all the way down. It wasn't the ghost of Murphy that had made that laugh. No, it was something else, something that sounded as though it had never known kindness, and Murphy hurried through the darkness, dark as night even though the day was not yet done, hurried to the pinprick of yellow he glimpsed at the end, Bellamy weighing next to nothing upon his back, Bellamy inches from death, Bellamy Bellamy Bellamy—and he had been down this path before. His father had been down this path before. Only the desperate sought out the wishing-tree, and the tunnel was drenched in it, drenched in all of the desperation of those who had come before.

They came into the clearing, just as Murphy remembered it. There was the tree, and the gentle music of the river which ran adjacent to it—a divergence of the main river, that must have only filled up recently, must have only returned when the water in the valley returned—but the wishing-tree wasn't the ash tree of Murphy's memory. No—there was something wrong with it.

Dark knots—several, strange and lump-like, almost as though something had been buried and leaked ink into the soil—marred the ground around the tree, whose branches were decorated with all sorts of things. A single shoe—once red, now faded ashy pink—hung by its laces; a stained doll sat in the crook of a branch. Ribbons and lockets, tarnished necklaces and rusted bracelets, all too many to count, were tied in bows or knotted around the bark. One frayed noose swung idly in the breeze. He remembered that. All those offerings of once-precious things in exchange for wishes. He did not remember the blackened veins which ran up the bark, the ink that had spread out from the knots in the ground. White mould grew on the underside of branches. There was the cloying smell of rot in the air.

‘It’s you,’ said a voice. ‘You chased us away.’

A spirit leaned against the blackened, rotting trunk. It looked like a young boy—then a girl—then something else entirely. It had horrible, glowing green eyes. They were nothing like Lexa’s eyes, Bellamy thought. They were the eyes of a rabid animal, frothing at the mouth, snapping at anything that came near. These were the eyes of something sick, something monstrous.

‘You have it, too,’ said Murphy, warily. ‘The sickness.’

_‘Have_ it?’ the spirit laughed. ‘I _am_ the sickness.’

The spirit had sharp hands. Bellamy wasn't quite sure how else to describe them—like twigs that could stab, that could slice, that could—

That could tear a child’s chest open.

‘Oh, the huntsman gets it,’ said the spirit, gleeful. ‘I can tell by the look in those pale, fading eyes. I had been wondering when you two would figure it out.’

‘But why?’ Bellamy asked. 'Why would you…?’

‘Because,’ said the spirit, rubbing its toe against one of the knots in the ground, ‘I was hungry. Because,’ it said, and Bellamy thought he saw something unhappy pass behind the glow of its eyes, ‘I couldn't stop.’

‘You couldn't stop?’ Murphy breathed. ‘You—’

‘I reap what's sown, blah, blah, blah,’ said the spirit, pouting childishly. ‘It doesn't matter. You can’t stop me. You won't. And I won't stop here—I’ll eat this whole rotting world whole, you see if I don't.’

‘Indeed we will,’ said a new voice.

'Captain Pike?’ Bellamy gasped.

The spirit trilled a laugh, as if delighted by this new development, while Bellamy’s old captain stepped into the clearing, slowly, warily, gun ready in his hand.

‘I trusted you once, Blake. You don't know how disappointed I was when you chose to side with the Weald—with these monsters.’

‘I am not your enemy, Pike,’ Bellamy said, sharply. ‘The monster isn't Murphy. It was never Murphy.’

‘I think,’ said Pike, voice hard, ‘it’s about time we put a stop to this. The Weald has been allowed to grow wild for a long time—for much too long. The King and I agree. It's time to put a stop to this for good.’

Murphy growled beneath him—a terrible, terrible sound, one that rose all the hair on Bellamy’s neck, that shivered its way up his spine, that prickled his scalp. ‘Nature knows no kings,’ he said. 'The Weald cares nothing for the wills of men.'

‘Is that so?’ said Pike. ‘Then I'll just have to make the will of men known.’ And with that, Captain Pike raised the gun and fired it straight at Murphy.

The ground lurched beneath him, and Bellamy was falling back, tumbling from Murphy's back and into the river. Water closed over his head, cutting off the world in an instant, and like a stone he sank into the dark.

* * *

The corrupted spirit of the wishing-tree cocked its head. So _noisy_ , it thought, at the agonised roar of the beast, as it whimpered and fell, the ghost upon its back landing in the river with barely a splash. Like all creatures of the Weald, it loathed men with guns. Yet this one had rid it of a pressing problem; this one had cut down a terrible pest—this lumbering beast, monstrous, eyes wild with the agony of the dying. The spirit would know what that looked like; it had blood on its hands, and hearts underfoot.

Then, the sprit of the wishing-tree paused. It knew the particular glow of this dying beast's eyes.

‘You wished for something once,’ it said to the beast, and it found its voice rose in surprise. The pitiful creature was trying to head for the water where the huntsman had fallen, but he paused to listen to the ash tree speak, in too much pain to reply. Blood spurted hot and thick from the wound in his chest; the ash tree knew then that the bullet had pierced the creature’s heart. He would not be long for the world—and yet—how was he so familiar?

‘You wished for the love of your mother,’ said the tree, though the details were faint, just out of reach—recollections of another life entirely. ‘You wished, and you knew not that she was already dead. Is that so?’

A heaving sigh. A wet gasp. The beast was going to die, but it would not do to have him die here.

It would not do. Blood was soaking into the ground—and it was hot. It was burning. The ash tree felt it in its blackened roots, an acid at the heart of it. It would not do.

Then, in an awful, horrible rattle, the beast spoke. ‘I wished for love,’ he said. ‘But… but love is not something… bartered… it is—’

‘No!’ hissed the wishing-tree, cutting the beast off. ‘ _No!’_

The blood in the ground _burned_.

Roots sprung free from the earth, and wrapped around the beast’s ankles, pulling the feet out from under it and dragging it away—but the beast’s red blood still smoked deep in the wishing-tree’s corrupted earth, corroding and corroding and corroding at the poison at the heart of it.

* * *

Murphy’s body came to a stop somewhere far from the ash-tree. He couldn't be sure. The world had gone dark, had dimmed to flickering lights and distant voices.

But he had to finish, even if the ash tree was too far to hear it, even if Bellamy was surely drowned by now, even if he was surely dead. He was the son of a witch, and he knew that spells had to be finished, for them to work. And he knew that the only spell he could muster up now was the strangest sort of spell of them all: the truth.

'Love,’ he gasped, with his dying breath, ‘cannot… be bartered or… or bought. It must…’ One final flicker of strength. He found the words ready in his throat, as if they too longed to be spoken. ‘It must be freely… freely-given.’

Then the world went dark for good. He only hoped that—even if the mangled spirit of the wishing-tree hadn't heard him—that somehow, at some point, Bellamy had. That he had known, without having to hear it aloud, that Murphy had loved him.

* * *

The ash tree jammed its twiggy fingers into its ears. ‘La la _laaaaaaa!’_ it sang, drowning out the final words of the useless little spell of a dying man.

A bullet lodged itself in its chest. The man, the human man, whomst the sprit has almost entirely forgotten about, was shooting. Shooting at the _wishing-tree_ , like the foolish thing it was. The spirit stifled an incredulous kind of laugh, and turned to face the soldier, taking its hands away from its ears.

‘I’m the second oldest creature in this Weald,’ said the spirit, with the voice of all the hearts it had buried. 

Another bullet in its chest.

(It couldn't remember the children’s names—well, couldn't remember any but the first. A boy called Wells.)

This bullet the wishing-tree caught in its razor-sharp teeth. 

'And you think a little ball of metal will kill me?’ said the spirit.

(There was only one thing that could kill it, and it had sunk into the water with the shadow of a huntsman, so soon to drown.)

‘I am as old as the earth itself,’ said the spirit. ‘You can't kill me.’

One step forward. Then two, and then three. The ash-tree registered terror in the man’s eyes as he pulled the trigger of his silly little gun to the hollow click of an empty barrel. He was all out of bullets.

The ash tree laughed, as the soldier turned and ran, white-eyed with fear, stinking of cowardice.

_'You can't kill me!’_ it sang to the soldier’s retreating back.

‘Can’t I?’ said a new voice.

The ash tree turned, sharply, to see the faded huntsman standing at the edge of the river-pool. His clothes were sopping wet, and all that was still visible of his body was the suggestion of hair, and a pair of dark eyes, hard and unyielding as a conker in the autumn.

There was no time to think on that, however, for in his invisible hands the huntsman held a bow, with an oak-arrow notched and pointed straight at the heart of the spirit of the wishing-tree.

* * *

Cool and dark. Bellamy knew he ought to panic. He knew he ought to be thrashing, to push toward to surface, to breathe. Yet, in the darkness of the water, a strange calm settled in him. _What’s the point?_ he thought. He had been fighting so long—and for what? What was the point? When it was so dark and quiet down here, under the surface? When he could finally have a chance at rest?

He sank slowly to the riverbed, the gravel rising to meet him. The gentle flow of the water passed him by; he wasn't carried by it. It passed right through him; through his empty clothes, through curls that had lost all of their colour. It was so quiet down here, the rest of the world muffled. His old life felt distant and transparent as a dream. He closed his eyes.

He remembered the day he had killed the deer. He remembered letting the water of the creek run through his fading fingertips. He remembered feeling so afraid he could scream.

(There was something he needed to stay for. There was someone too important to forget.)

He wasn't afraid now. He was just tired; he was weary. He barely remembered what being awake felt like; he didn't remember having the strength to go on. He was finished. He was ready to go.

There was something in the water with him. He sensed it with whatever strange new instinct he had, with whatever had let him slip in and out of that other Weald, that dark world—it told him that he wasn't alone. He opened his eyes.

Feet—a fawn’s feet. At the very edge of the shallow river-pool. He saw the shadow of its head draw close to the surface of the water, as if it were about to drink. It looked—odd. Almost misshapen. Almost—

Bellamy looked again at the shadow of its head.

The shadow, Bellamy realised, of both of its heads.

Like electricity, a sudden surge of energy laced through his body, pushing him upwards with an urgency that felt red-hot, that felt blinding. He broke the surface with no splash and no splutter, only a quiet fortitude, and a determination that burned. The fawn looked at him with its four sad eyes, and quietly, carefully, turned and stepped away from the river-pool, and back into the woods.

Bellamy didn't understand. Hadn't he killed the two-headed deer? Hadn’t he shot it dead?

Suddenly, the memory of Lexa’s sage voice sounded in his ears. _Growth and decay. That's all life is._

The two-headed stag, so sacred to the Weald, was dead. He had killed it. And then it had grown again.

He rose up, out of the water, and he turned around to face the clearing of the ash tree, the wishing tree, poison pulsing in the soil.

Neither Murphy nor Pike was anywhere to be seen, but the strange, mangled spirit of the tree was there, laughing at the edge of the clearing—a high, childish sort of laugh, full of malice and mockery.

Bellamy was a huntsman. His muscles, wasted as they were, remembered what to do. He had the arrow notched and pointed at the beast in a heartbeat, and when the creature turned around, smile wiped from its cruel face, he let the arrow fly.

Inhumanly quick, the spirit lifted its hand and caught it an inch before it hit its mark. Eyes narrowed, the spirit examined the arrow briefly, before splintering it to pieces in its fist.

‘So, you survived your little dip,’ said the spirit, almost conversationally. ‘How might you have managed that?’

Bellamy did not cry. He did not rage. He did not despair. There was blood on the ground, and some part of him knew it belonged to Murphy.

He couldn't bear to think—

So he didn't. He stepped forward. ‘You still owe me a wish,’ he said.

The spirit’s mouth twisted up, and it laughed. ‘A wish? A _wish?!’_ Something in its face suddenly flickered—and Bellamy glimpsed a boy, a boy who looked like Jaha if all the years had been wiped clean. ‘A wish is what started all of this. The boy followed the will o’ the wisp, and the father found the wishing-tree.’ Another horrible, toothy grin—but there was no malice in it, and no mockery. ‘A _wish_ is what started all of this!’

‘A wish is what I’m owed, am I not?’ Bellamy rasped.

‘You think the Weald owes you anything, little fool?’ the spirit cried. ‘I owe you _nothing!’_

‘Aw,’ said Bellamy, ‘pretty please?’

(Murphy might have said that himself once, Bellamy thought. Murphy might have strutted right up to the ancient spirit, and mocked it. Murphy—Murphy—Murphy—)

The wishing-tree hissed. ‘Well then. What do you wish for?’ it sang, in a horrible sing-song voice, mouth stretched into an inhumanly wide grin, lurching forward with inhumanly sharp hands, ready to pierce Bellamy’s—inhuman?—chest. ‘What do you wish, little huntsman? What do you _wish!?_ ’

With a wild cry, the spirit stabbed its razor-sharp claws into Bellamy’s chest—and its hands passed straight through. There was nothing under Bellamy’s shirt. He was nothing more now than a gust of wind holding some wet clothes aloft.

With a strength he didn't know he had, he held the wishing-tree spirit close with one invisible hand, held it so close he could smell the sickly-sweet of rotting fruit on its breath.

‘I wish to end this,’ he said, and with the other hand he plunged the third oak arrow deep into its—human?—chest.

With a grotesque, blood-curdling shriek, a shriek so loud they heard it in the village, a shriek so loud they heard it in the castle of the King, the wishing tree—the real wishing-tree, standing tall and, once upon a time, proud—went up in a hiss of bone-white flames.

Bellamy held no dying spirit in his hands—he held a boy. Seventeen, perhaps. Kind brown eyes, a furrowed brow.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but it wasn't just the boy who spoke—it was Atom, it was Charlotte, it was others, nameless, who stood in a circle around the burning tree, their ghostly features illuminated by the white light of the flames.

‘I know,’ said Bellamy, and he sagged a little. ‘I’m sorry, too.’

‘Thank you,’ said Wells Jaha, and with one strong gust of wind, a wind from nowhere, all of the ghosts flickered from life, snuffed out quickly and quietly as candle-flames at bedtime. The dead wishing-tree no longer burned. Its blackened skeleton was silent; it would grant no more wishes now. A charred noose swung empty in the breeze.

It was done.

  
  


* * *

_Dad?_ Thelonious Jaha heard. Taunting him. Luring him. A whisper, a shout; it didn't matter. It was impossible. He had corrupted the spirit of his son, and he would never hear from him again.

_Dad?_

The sun was setting, and the Weald was a dangerous place to be at night-time.

_Dad?_

Charles Pike came running, breathless, white in the eyes with fright. He had dropped his gun. _Good_ , Jaha thought. Those had no business being in the hands of men like Charles Pike—ruthless men, dangerous men, hungry men.

‘So you had no luck with the wishing-tree?’ said Jaha.

Pike rounded on him with an almost inhuman snarl. ‘You led me straight into a trap, you old fool! There was some—some _thing_ there—’

‘Well, I didn't mean to,’ said Jaha mournfully.

Pike paused. ‘You are entirely crazy,’ he said, as if the thought had just occurred to him. ‘Why did I ever listen to you? You’re insane.’

Jaha only smiled. ‘That’s what all the nonbelievers say. Come—you want back to the village safely? I’ll take you. The Weald is not a safe place to be at night, but I’m sure you already know that.’

He turned and took off into the woods, and he did not have to check that Pike was following. The Weald would reveal no paths to a man with a gun; Jaha was his only guide back to the safety of the village.

_Dad._ Perhaps Jaha imagined his son’s laugh. Perhaps he imagined the shadow of him, disappearing round the broad trunk of a tree.

Pike looked a little spooked. ‘How many miles to the village?’ he asked.

‘Some miles yet,’ said Jaha.

He did not lie. It was some miles yet to the village. But that wasn't where Jaha was leading Pike at all.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

_Dad, I know._

‘What?’ said Pike impatiently, squinting in the growing darkness of the forest. ‘Stop mumbling, you mad old fool.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jaha, louder.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Pike, wearily. ‘Let’s just get back to the village and call it a day. I’ll summon reinforcements from—’

He was sinking.

‘Jaha!’ he cried, panic searing the edges of his voice. The fireflies danced in the distance. The swamp was hungry.

Jaha did not tell Pike to stop struggling; he suspected that Pike was not the sort of man who listened. He ignored Pike’s desperate screams and thrashing gurgles so entirely that it would appear to any onlooker that he didn't even hear them—even as he tilted his head to one side, as though he were listening.

Pike was long dead and sunk by the time Thelonious Jaha emerged from out of his trance. In the distance, by the fireflies, a ghost appeared.

_Dad? I miss you, Dad._

‘I miss you, too, son,’ said Jaha.

_Come here, Dad. Come and see me._

Jaha smiled, beatific, and not even a little bit mad.

‘I’m coming, Wells,’ he said.

He stepped forward, and plunged down into the hungry black mud of the swamp.

  
  


* * *

Bellamy followed the cracks in the earth from which roots had surged, away from the empty, bloodstained clearing, and all the way back to the garden of yarrow and foxglove.

He did not know how he knew Murphy would be there—only he did. And then he saw him, as dusk set over the distant blue peaks, saw the lumpen shape of him in the meadow, and heard the rasp of a beast’s dying breath.

_‘Murphy!’_ Bellamy thought, and then realised he had said it aloud, his voice half-screech, half-moan.

He stumbled forward, to where the beast lay, bloodied and broken, in the centre of the garden of yarrow and foxglove.

‘Yarrow,’ mumbled Bellamy, his mind gone dim with horror, his vision shot through with black dread, red panic. ‘Yarrow heals wounds.’ With his useless hands he grasped for the stems of the white flowers, but he couldn't get any kind of grip. He couldn't pull the blossom free from the earth.

His knees buckled beneath him, all the strength the river had given him spent, and—yarrow abandoned—he crawled forward, dragging himself, familiar with the taste of his own terror and the way the sun was setting overhead, the way the sky had turned the colour of blood.

‘Murphy,’ he said. ‘Murphy.’

A wind passed through the meadow, and a man lay still and silent, looking so very small in the imprint a beast had made on the grasses. Blood stained the earth around him—so much blood. Too much blood. More blood than there could be any coming back from.

‘Bellamy?’

The sound was more a whimper than a name, but Bellamy heard it clear as a bell, all the same. His hands gathered Murphy's head close, tugged his shoulders up to rest on his lap. Murphy’s ice-blue eyes were sightless, but there was a rattle of life still in his chest. Just enough for a moment longer. Just enough time to say goodbye.

Bellamy tore his gaze away from Murphy’s chalk-white face when he heard a tinkling laugh—but the ghost of the young boy, the young Murphy, who stood at the edge of the meadow, didn't linger. He looked sombre. He looked, Bellamy thought, afraid.

The sun passed out of sight, and so did the ghost. Bellamy blinked hard, but the little boy did not reappear.

‘Bellamy,’ Murphy gasped again. His voice was wet. Blood dripped red from the side of his mouth. Bellamy pressed his hands to Murphy's ruined chest as if he could stem the flow—as if he could save him.

‘You’re gonna be okay,’ Bellamy said. ‘I swear—I—’

He looked down. Somehow, Murphy had found the strength to lift his hand, and to grasp Bellamy’s bloodstained wrist with it. His mouth was forming words, but no sounds came out. Just a gargle, a gasp.

‘I can't lose you,’ Bellamy said. ‘I love you, Murphy. I—I can’t lose you.’

Murphy’s hand fell slack, but Bellamy caught it, slippery with blood. ‘No, nononono, don't—I love you. I love you—I—’

Some time later, Bellamy became aware that he wasn't alone.

‘Bellamy.’

Lexa had no ashes around her eyes now. Green like the forest. Green like the Weald. She took his hands in her own, lifting them from where they lingered on Murphy’s ruined chest. Her touch was gentle and it surprised him, in the narrow part of his mind that could still be surprised, that still had the wherewithal for surprise. The rest of him kept playing over Murphy’s voice: gargled, whispered, choking, dreadful dreadful dreadful—dead. 

Clarke was there, too, and she was crying. She held Murphy’s other hand to her chest. His eyes were still open; clear and colourless like glass. There wasn't anything behind them. No spark. No flicker of green. Bellamy thought that maybe someone should close those eyes; Bellamy also thought he would kill the first person who tried. Once they were closed, once that colourless, endless gaze was sealed away to the dark, that was it. That was final. And he knew that was stupid, he knew it, he knew it didn't matter, that Murphy was dead anyway, that nothing could change that stark dread fact, that this was just some fool’s notion, some mad idea not fit for a young child, daft and desperate and afraid—but once Murphy’s eyes were closed, that was it. 

They wouldn't open again.

Bellamy leaned his head back far enough that he felt the bones in his neck grind. The vaulted dark of the night sky soared above. He glimpsed a scattering of stars. No moon, not this early in the month; they would shine brighter for it. He leaned back farther, far enough that the entire world tilted beneath him, and sucked in a shuddering breath. He wanted to scream, Murphy's head laying heavy on his lap, scream at that ignorant impossible sky, but he hadn't anything left in him to scream with.

He was done with it, with all of it. He was finished. Let the world be done with him, too, and he could step off the brink and not care for the fall. He wouldn't cry, and he wouldn't rage, and he wouldn't mourn; once he started the earth may flood with it, like the river flooded the valley below. He was finished. Let him be done with it.

Lexa took his hands, wet and sticky and crimson with Murphy’s blood. He barely noticed.

‘He did it,’ she said, thick with grief and wonder. ‘Saved a life already lost.’

She wiped away the blood on Bellamy’s hands, cleaned the red from his skin; his human skin, tanned brown fingers and a mole on the inside of his wrist, and all of it clear as day in the twilight.

‘You loved him,’ said Clarke. ‘You did it. You both did it.’

Bellamy looked down at his whole, human hands. The wind tousled his hair. Murphy’s head was heavy on his lap, his body growing cold to the touch.

Bellamy was whole again. But Murphy wasn’t. Murphy—

Murphy was dead. And Bellamy had run all out of wishes. Murphy was gone. And Bellamy had loved him.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (There Is An Epilogue)
> 
> as always thank you so much for reading! please let me know what you thought!


	6. epilogue | what was sown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you once again and times a million to nico (sapphictomaz), charlie (blueparacosm), elle (hopskipaway), and warren (maunwocha). they have each been very kind and hyped me up a lot writing this, ahem, beast of a story. check out everything they have written if you have not already and join me in bowing low at their illustrious, gifted feet

Once upon a time,

there was a valley, deep in the forest they call the Weald.

A strange thing had happened. A man, unfamiliar to all who lived there, had cleared the valley of its remaining thorns, and the brambles had not grown back. The river had gone down; it would not burst its banks again. It snaked through the valley and turned it green again. Soon, no one would remember why they had called it the Valley of Teeth. Soon, villagers would move in, and build new houses in the valley’s heart. Soon, children would play in the charred old ruins of the castle that has once stood at the foot of the hills, and neither man nor ghost would disturb them.

But the Weald was up to stranger things still.

Once upon a time,

there was a meadow.

In one corner stood an old watch tower. Another, a garden of white yarrow and purple foxglove. This was no ordinary meadow, no ordinary clearing.

A part of the Weald had died there. His blood had stained the ground, and the tears shed over his body had watered the earth—but this was no ordinary earth. 

The ground here remembered. 

All through the winter a slender sapling grew, fighting off the teeth of frost, shrinking from the cold but growing, growing, growing, like the little thing survived out of sheer spite—or maybe out of some other impulse entirely. 

And, in a secret certain slant of light, the sapling wasn't a sapling at all.

By spring, the hawthorn tree was tall; it had grown much quicker than any ordinary tree would, but these were no ordinary woods, and this was no ordinary earth that the tree grew in. Sometimes, the spirit of a silver birch came to visit. She had to stand on her toes to run her hands through the white blossoms of springtime. Her hands had once been stained with blood, but now they were clean.

And by the time the sprigs of white yarrow had returned to the meadow, by the time the violet bells of the foxglove nodded down to the earth, the spirit of the silver birch tree could coax the hawthorn to move.

* * *

Bellamy had spent the year in silence. Not even Clarke could get him to speak. Wordlessly, he had watched her clear the briars from the cottage walls. Then he had taken the crumbling stone in his hands, had helped her rebuild her home, and she made him welcome in it. She set him to work in the woods and the garden; teasing lavender and thyme from the earth through the summer, and foraging for mushrooms and complimenting her pumpkins in the fall. She had him chopping wood for her fires and gathering apples for her pies; he set traps for meat and furs, and Lexa made sure he caught nothing but rabbits in his snares. Still he did not speak, communicating in smiles and nods and pointed fingers, in gentle touches and long looks. In October, Octavia came to visit, tall beech spirit Lincoln in tow, but she couldn't coax a word out of him. Bellamy’s voice might as well have been left behind in the meadow of yarrow and foxglove for all the use he had made of it. He had certainly left his heart there.

Often, he would wake in his little box room, in his warm little bed, and overhear worried voices from the kitchen or from Clarke’s bedroom, or he would catch her and Lexa both sending him anxious looks. But they had nothing to worry about: it wouldn't have mattered even if Bellamy hadn’t lost his voice. He still would have nothing left to say.

He wasn't terribly unhappy, though. He had grown to love Clarke in all her steel and sweetness; he had even grown to love Lexa, whose soft heart was barely hidden under all that bark. There was a kindness that grew like moss on every surface of this house, cushioning him as he moved through it. He felt safe here. He felt useful. He had a chair at the table, and a favourite spot on the little sofa, and he washed the dishes in the sink and put them away after Clarke had cooked them all supper. It felt like going through the motions, but at the same time, it didn't feel like that at all. This was a good life that Clarke and Lexa had welcomed him into. They were happy, the two of them, and it was hard sometimes to be unhappy around them, when they welcomed all of the light into their home. 

But they were in love; deeply, endlessly so. They held each other’s hands when they slept. They shared kisses like candy. They spoke to each other without having to say a word. Bellamy would be lying if he said that it didn't crush all the breath from his chest every time he saw it. And he would be lying if he said he didn't resent them, sometimes, when it grew dark outside and no lights shone down in the ruined valley, in the nights where he woke with a horrible gasp, fearful he would draw his hands out from beneath his blanket and once again find them stained with red.

But mostly he missed Murphy, missed him in a constant, small, mournful way. His grief was not earth-shattering, not anymore, but it was constant. He waded through it, when he wasn’t wiped out by a sudden wave; like a monkey upon his shoulders it sat, quiet mostly, but sometimes wrapping its hands around his neck and _squeezing_ —but not always, and not for ever. He lived with grief that winter and it didn't kill him.

In spring, the flowers grew again. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but Bellamy had been living in a dreadful sort of daze for such a long time that to see the hardy white heads of snowdrops claw their way up through the frozen ground almost shocked him.

In the spring, Lexa took his hand, and said, ‘You should go to the place where he died. You should see it. White yarrow grows there, and foxglove.’

Bellamy, of course, did not reply.

And he did not visit the garden of yarrow and foxglove, not for several months more.

* * *

A year to the day that Murphy’s blood had covered his hands, Bellamy picked some wildflowers from the overgrown garden of the castle ruins. He couldn't name the flowers, even if he had the voice to. Then, at dusk, he hugged Clarke and clasped Lexa’s hand in goodbye, and then he climbed the hill to the watchtower, as the sun embraced the mountains at his back.

It was twilight. A secret certain slant of sun, the last gasp of a summer’s day, gathered by the tall hawthorne tree. Bellamy laid the flowers at its feet, and took a step back.

He waited for one minute, then two, and then three. Nothing happened. The meadow held no secret, only poisonous foxglove, and only healing yarrow. A wayward finger of the river, a rock pool where the deer come to drink. Fireflies, luring strangers into the swamp, and moss crawling up the stone of the watchtower. He found no cure to his grief here. He found no peace.

He had turned to go when a sudden gust of cold bit through his jacket, and seemed to tug him back.

The wind that came from no direction passed through the hawthorn branches with a sigh and a whisper, and then where a hawthorn tree once grew there stood a man, made of glass and of gold among the fireflies.

He held Bellamy’s voice in his hand; he had been keeping it safe for him. In the garden of yarrow and foxglove he opened his palm, and it fluttered back home again. Bellamy felt warm from his fingers to his toes.

‘You came back,’ said Bellamy. He found that tears dripped from his chin, though he could not remember having started to cry.

Murphy was not unchanged. His skin was pale and delicate as the hawthorn blossom. His dark hair had the texture of grass if you looked at it for long enough, and a leaf curled out from behind one of his ears. But his eyes still gleamed. His heart still beat. 

‘So did you,’ he said, and he lifted Bellamy’s hand—full and human—to his lips and pressed a feather-light kiss to each brown fingertip.

Bellamy wrapped his arms around him in the meadow of yarrow and foxglove and did not think he would ever let go; Murphy clung to him right back, fingers digging into his shoulders, hard as twigs, knocking grief—most of it—off its perch to skulk away, unseen, into the woods.

Bellamy pressed his new hands to Murphy’s cheeks, soft as the skin of a petal. ‘I missed you,’ he said, and it wasn't enough, and it was enough all the same. ‘I missed you.’

‘I came back,’ said Murphy, again, and it wasn't enough, but it was enough all the same. ‘I won't leave you again Bellamy. I’m not going anywhere.’

They stood there in an embrace for a time immeasurable. Perhaps, in a secret certain slant of light, one might glimpse them there still. Or perhaps not; for as the story goes, after a long moment, the two of them arose and went, and left the Valley of Teeth behind. Together, hand in hand, they walked into the Weald, and were neither seen nor heard from forevermore.

* * *

There are many stories about the Weald. There are stories about the charred ruins of the castle in the valley, and the old watchtower on top of the hill. There are stories about the will o’ the wisp that lives in the swamp, and how a ghost was turned back into a man by the touch of blood on his hands. Some tales are half-forgotten, but others still endure in the memory of the valley, as though they were written into the very earth.

They say, too, that there's a beast in the Weald.

But that's an old story now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the end!  
> thank you so much for reading and indulging me in this long and weird fic, especially to those who have been following it since i started it in APRIL when times were only recently unprecedented (about a hundred years ago now). i know it took me a million years to finish and i hope it was worth the wait. thanks again for reading—it is so so appreciated!
> 
> nico, charlie, elle. thank you again. i'll never stop thanking you. you'll have to stuff a sock in my mouth.
> 
> i am also oogaboogu on twitter. promise i'm nice and only talk about being born of the swamp 5 percent of the time
> 
> all my love, stay safe <3


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